With homemade bombs and grandiose visions, Heavy Load is often called Sweden’s first heavy metal band. The brothers Ragne and Styrbjörn Wahlquist from Stockholm set a high level with the debut “Full speed at high level” in 1978 and kick-started the Swedish heavy metal wave.
They were early in having a viking theme in the lyrics, something many bands later adopted and which developed into the viking metal subgenre.
Run famous studio
The Wahlquist brothers also ran the studio Thunderload, where artists such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Hammerfall and Candlemass have recorded.
In 2018 Heavy Load reunited on stage at the Sweden Rock Festival – 40 years after the debut album and in 2023 the album “Riders of the Ancient Storm” came out.
Was also a writer
In connection with that, Ragne Wahlquist also debuted as an author with the first part of the Viking epic “Wahlgaard Saga”.
Ragne and Styrbjörn were in the middle of the recordings for Heavy Load’s fifth album. The intention is to complete the record and to carry the band forward, the family tells Kulturnyheterna
Ragne Wahlquist was 69 years old.
Watch Heavy Load play live and hear more about the band’s history in the clip above.