HEXENHAUS FEAT. KING DIAMOND GUITARIST MIKE WEAD TO REISSUE FIRST THREE ALBUMS
On May 16, 2025, powerhouse label ROAR! will reissue the first three, iconic records by Swedish thrash and speed metal legends Hexenhaus: A Tribute To Insanity (1988), The Edge Of Eternity (1990), and Awakening (1991).
Available on CD, colored vinyl and digitally, the physical products will also come with new liner notes and an exclusive history text. All formats got remastered by Ronnie Björnström (Mezzrow).
Depending on the path you chose, one could say that the story of Sweden’s best kept thrash metal secret starts all the way up in the northern parts of Sweden. In a city called Boden to be more precise. That’s where the metal force Maninnya Blade took it’s form during the middle of the ‘80s.
Their take on speed metal caught the interest of the young guitarist Mickael Vikström, better known as Mike Wead and later on the guitarist in both Mercyful Fate and King Diamond. He would start out as a fan of the band, but it didn’t take long until he was their new guitarist and the talk of the town.
“When I joined them they already had four great songs more or less done already. It was, ‘Requiem’, ‘The Dead Are Restless’, ‘Delirious’ and ‘Eaten Alive’,” Wead reveals. “The style was much heavier than the music we had done before and to mark the fresh start of the band, at least that’s how we saw it, we also decided to change the name from Maninnya to Hexenhaus. The name is German for witch’s house and is a reference to the Malefizhaus in Bamberg, Germany. A frightful place where hundreds of suspected witches were tortured and executed during the early 17th century.”
To call the material “heavier than before” is an understatement. The music on the four songs that ended up on the today highly sought after demo cassette Demo 1988 drew its inspiration from bands like Metallica, Slayer and Mercyful Fate.
After signing with Axis Records, the band entered the studio to record their stellar debut album A Tribute To Insanity. Half of the album contains the four songs that made up the demo, as well as four more songs that seen the band combine ideas and trading riffs like never heard before on a Swedish metal album. A Tribute To Insanity was originally released on vinyl on October 17, 1988.
Preorder the A Tribute To Insanity reissue here.
Follow-up album, The Edge Of Eternity, was originally released on November 1, 1990. Preorder the reissue at this location.
During the same time as The Edge Of Eternity was released in the early ‘90s, Megadeth released their classic album Rust In Peace, Exodus came out with Impact Is Imminent and Germany’s Mekong Delta – who also was a big influence on The Edge Of Eternity – came out with their most popular album Dances Of Death (And Other Walking Shadows). To say that the thrash scene was looking good is an understatement, it was boiling hot!
In the midst of it stood Hexenhaus just waiting for the big breakthrough. “We thought that we would get approached by different management and offered tours that would take us all over Europe but that never happened”, Mike Wead sighs. “We were amateurs when it came to promote ourselves and how could we be anything else? We didn’t know that we needed to do more than creating albums to get a breakthrough!”
When the offers didn’t come as expected Mike and the band started to work on new material. But just like the last time it was with a new line-up who was more than ready to give their all for the band. Besides the broken bones, the blood and the gated reverbs the recordings of Awakening went smooth. The album was released in August 1991 and much to the bands dismay nothing happened for them this time either. “Once again we got great reviews from abroad,” Mike recalls. “Big and important magazines like Metal Hammer, Kerrang, Metal Forces and Aardschok gave us fantastic reviews! Even better than the ones we’ve received before, but we just couldn’t break through. We were still stuck in Sweden doing small shows put together by fans.”
Preorder Awakening here.