Crashdiet

Stockholm outfit Crashdïet surfaced at the start of the 2000s, drawing its sonic and visual identity from the Sunset Strip glam and hair-metal era of the 1980s while injecting a sharper punk edge. Their gritty, sexually charged fusion of Skid Row, Guns N’ Roses, Kiss, W.A.S.P., and G.G. Allin quickly found favor inside Sweden, producing a run of domestic chart entries that included Rest in Sleaze (2005), Generation Wild (2010), and Savage Playground (2013). The suicide of frontman Dave Lepard in 2006 threatened to end the group, yet the remaining members pressed forward by cycling through singers—H. Olliver Twisted, Simon Cruz, and Gabriel Keyes—to keep releasing sleaze-rock records such as Rust (2019) and Automaton (2022).

Following a series of personnel shifts, the band secured a deal with Universal in 2004, becoming, in their own estimation, the first sleaze act to land on a major label in more than a decade. Their debut, Rest in Sleaze, arrived the next year and climbed to number 12 on the Swedish albums chart, spawning the singles “Riot in Everyone,” “Breaking the Chainz,” “Knokk ’Em Down,” and “It’s a Miracle.” In January 2006 the 26-year-old Lepard took his own life inside his apartment while battling depression. The three surviving musicians initially concluded they could not continue, but an unexpected wave of global fan support prompted a single farewell tribute concert in February. Months afterward the former members reconvened, resolved to form a new group, and began auditioning vocalists. By October they announced they would retain the Crashdïet name with Lepard’s family’s blessing, thereby preserving his memory and the band’s core message.

In January 2007, one year after Lepard’s death, the trio introduced Finnish singer H. Olliver Twisted (of Reckless Love). Their second album, The Unattractive Revolution, followed in October and peaked at number 11 on the Swedish chart. Twisted departed in 2009, making way for Simon Cruz, who first appeared on record with 2010’s Generation Wild—the band’s strongest domestic showing to that point—which received an international release on Frontiers Records the subsequent year. The provocative single “Cocaine Cowboys” preceded the 2013 full-length Savage Playground. Cruz exited during the group’s Japanese tour in 2015. The arrival of new vocalist Gabriel Keyes was signaled by the single “We Are Legion”; two further tracks, “Reptile” and “In the Maze,” preceded the 2019 album Rust. Automaton, issued in 2022, marked drummer Eric Young’s final recording before his departure shortly afterward and featured a guest appearance by Steel Panther’s Michael Starr; it was also the band’s first studio effort for Golden Robot Records.