The story so far...
Venerea started out as Venereal Disease back in 1991, when four guys from school decided to form a band to have something to do in the small westcoastal town of Falkenberg, Sweden. Daniel ”Dana” Johansson (bass), Johan ”Bengan” Bengtsson (vocals/guitar), Mattias ”Talle” Toldbod (drums), & Stefan Stenslund (guitar) set up a rehearsal space on the loft of a friend’s dad’s barn and covered classic eighties punkers such as the Hard-Ons, Gang Green, Bad Religion, and of course the Ramones, as well as some punked-up metal covers. However, Stefan was more into metal than the rest of the band, so he was swiftly replaced by Mikael ”Mike” Persson (vocals/bass), who the guys met at Psychotic Youth’s brilliant 100th gig. Since he had a year or so more bass experience than Dana, the latter switched to guitar, and the two immediately started writing songs of their own, then more often than not dealing with the timeless issues of porn & beer.
The first thirty self-penned numbers or so were cut for two legendary demos, ”From Beer To Eternity” (’92), & ”The Second Cuming of Venereal Disease” (’93), that attracted enough attention to get them their first record deal. Before recording the first of three mini-cd’s for the now defunct Swedish label Brööl, the band shortened their moniker to Venerea, the name of a rocket that the US were supposed to have sent up in the sixties to penetrate the planet Venus and find out what it is made of. ”Hullabaloo” (’94) is one of the worst debuts ever released, and is now out of print forever and ever, amen. The band recorded two more MCD:s for the Brööl label, the classic ”Shake Your Booty” (’95) & the ill-fated ”Swollen” (’96).
During this period they toured a lot in Sweden and were one of the biggest punkbands in the strong Swedish scene that included amongst others bands such as Millencolin, No Fun At All and Satanic Surfers. After two delightful European tours Bengan was kicked out for not learning new songs properly, and went on to join Daily Distortion and later his current group Footstompers.
Meanwhile, Venerea figured that it was time to move on and after considering several offers from European lablels for a while they decided to go with German label Gift Of Life. The first thing they did was to re-release the “Shake your booty” album with the “Swollen” songs on it as well making it a fullength record, a record that in it`s various formats have sold around 15000 copies so far.
They recorded their first proper full-length album ”Both Ends Burning” (Gift Of Life, ’97) as a threesome before recruiting Andreas ”Anden” Flygare (guitar, vocals) from the Swedish band Scarecrow. He had no problem learning the tunes, that by now were more technical, faster, and lyrically more mature. More European tours followed before drummer Talle left to pursue his career as an electrician. Session drummer Mattias ”El Bonko” Johansson filled the drum stool on the upcoming European tour in support of the Both Ends Burning album and on the 10” picture disc vinyl release ”We Shall Overcome” (recorded in ’98, released by Renate/Community in ’01), which was also the first of three records on which he occupied the producer’s chair.
The band’s newest member is ex-roadie Fredrik ”Fred” Andersson, who had never laid hands on a drum kit before joining the band. The first album graced by his presence is ”Losing Weight, Gaining Ground” (Renate/Community, ’01), a record that is considered their best record to date.
This record was supported by several succesful European tours including a 5 week tour called Vans Off The Wall tour which was a package tour were they played together with Ignite, SNFU, Deviates and Powerhouse all over Europe.
The band have just finished recording their new album “Out in the red which will be out on People Like You Records on the 10th of March 2003. The release of “Out in the red” will be followed by tons of touring which starts off on the 20th of January when they will embark on a month long tour together with Ten Foot Pole (USA) which will be followed by a headlining tour in Europe during the spring.
Source: http://www.venereapunk.com/
