Miljenko Matijevic says his Death To Love project with Niclas Engelin is heavy Gothenburg metal, with a first single due in October.
The man who sang “She’s Gone” is now screaming over melodic death metal riffs. Miljenko Matijevic has spent 35 years as one of hard rock’s most recognisable high voices, and the record he has just finished sounds nothing like any of it.
The Steelheart frontman has been working with Niclas Engelin, the Swedish guitarist who spent six separate stints in In Flames and now plays in The Halo Effect, Engel and We Sell The Dead. Speaking to “Laughing Monkey With Shawn Ratches“, Matijevic described how the pairing came about.
“I had this vision I was gonna do something really different instead of the rock world, something really heavy. And I had another friend of mine, a Swedish guy, and I had talked to him about that, and he goes, ‘You need to meet Niclas.’ So Niclas and I connected. And I gotta tell you — he came over. We did 10 songs. He had the music, so he put the songs up, and I just went live, whatever came out. I mean, boom, boom, boom. And it’s, like, boom, there it is. Of course, then you gotta finesse it, write the lyrics and all that stuff,” Matijevic said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth)
Asked what it sounds like, he did not reach for comparisons within his own catalogue: “Ah, just wait till you hear this s**t. [Niclas is] a fantastic guitar player. So think of it as Gothenburg sound — really heavy Gothenburg sound — with my voice on it.”
The vocal approach covers considerably more ground than the power ballads that made his name: “I promise you — this is intense. And I’m singing my a** off. We’re doing all of it. We’re screaming, we’re yelling, we’re singing low, we’re singing soft, we’re singing in between. It is everything. And the lyrics are super deep, intense, and a lot of that stuff that I’ve been through in my life.”
The project is called Death To Love, and Matijevic stopped to head off the obvious reading: That doesn’t mean ‘kill love’. It means when you die, you come to love.”
A first single is planned for October. He was careful about the schedule: “We’re looking at an October release for the first single. We’re just preparing. We wanna make sure we roll this out properly. It’s way too precious to just throw out there.”
Touring is on the table, though not in small rooms.
“Oh, absolutely. We would love, love, love to tour with this. It’s a big picture. It’s a big show. It’s not really for clubs. We’ll see where life takes it. You want one thing, but life has another thing for you… Wherever it takes us. That’s the way I look at it. There’s love everywhere, and I am always ready to jump on a plane to perform to people who are appreciative and wanna hear it. Absolutely,” Matijevic concluded.
The collaboration was flagged in Steelheart‘s own promotional material three weeks ago, which mentioned a new project with Engelin without naming it. This interview is the first time it has been identified.
Matijevic was born in Zagreb and moved to the United States at six. Steelheart‘s 1990 self-titled debut reached number 40 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum, shifting 33,000 copies in Japan on its first day, with “She’s Gone” topping international charts for 17 weeks and “I’ll Never Let You Go (Angel Eyes)” reaching number 14 in America.
That run stopped abruptly. On Halloween night 1992, during promotion for Tangled In Reins, an improperly secured lighting truss struck him on the back of the head in Denver, breaking his nose, cheekbone and jaw and twisting his spine. He walked off the stage under his own power before being taken to hospital. The band as it existed ended that night.
He rebuilt Steelheart four years later and recorded Wait, which carried “We All Die Young“, later re-recorded for “Rock Star“, the 2001 film in which Matijevic supplied the singing voice for Mark Wahlberg‘s character. He has also fronted The Doors alongside Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger. Steelheart‘s most recent release was a cover of Badfinger‘s “Without You“, issued in July with a 40-piece orchestra behind it.
Engelin first joined In Flames in 1997 and moved in and out of the band repeatedly before Chris Broderick took over the role. He co-founded The Halo Effect in 2019 with Mikael Stanne, Jesper Strömblad, Peter Iwers and Daniel Svensson, all In Flames alumni bar Stanne. That band has released Days Of The Lost, March Of The Unheard and the covers EP We Are Shadows through Nuclear Blast.
