Eighth Avenue

Eighth Avenue was a progressive metal band from Uppsala, Sweden. They formed in 2013 and were active up until 2017. Their music style was mainly progressive metal with odd time signatures, but dabbled in punk and metalcore in their earlier days. They released 1 album in 2016 named "*Descent Into Madness*" and split up the following year partially due to Martins and Adrians departure from the band.

 **Final Members:** | * Ludwig Alexandersson
* Andreas Forsberg
* Lucas Fjällrud
 **Ex-members:** | * Martin Widerlöv
* Adrian Banfi Johansson
* Felix Arvidsson
* Sebastian Mattsson
* Oliver Wallner

## About

### Early Days (2013-2014)

Eighth Avenue started at first under the name "My Own Violence" with Sebastian on vocals, Felix on bass, Ludwig on drums and Andreas and Martin on guitar. This happened because they were at the time all in the same class (high school). Felix shortly switched to taking the role as the clean vocalist while Sebastian would do screamo-style vocals. Oliver filled the position as the bass player at this time.

The band wrote a couple of songs during their first year of existance, including "*What Lies Within*", which was the first song they wrote. They also recorded a demo version of it in their high schools music practice room, when Ludwig was still the bands drummer. Other songs they wrote during this period includes "*Sirens Call*", "*Let Me In*" and "*Going Wild*".

The band performed their first concert at their high schools christmas holiday celebration, with only Sebastian as a vocalist as Felix was thinking of quitting the band. He did formally quit the band in early 2014. Sebastian and Oliver later quit because of their difference in music they wanted the band to make. The band was looking for a new vocalist for a brief time but realised that Ludwig could be the singer instead of the drummer. William soon joined the band as the new drummer since Ludwig and Martin had met him during a summer job where they all played music together. The question of who would play the bass was simple to answer, since Adrian had already been standing in for Oliver a couple of times during band practices when he was busy.

### The Core Lineup (2014-2016)

Now that the members issue was resolved they decided to rename the band, as they felt like there was enough difference in member line-up to warrant a name change. After some concideration they decided on the name "Eighth Avenue" because of the location where they had formed, which was their high school. The street number of the school was 8 and when entering the school you walked through an avenue of trees to get to the main entrance.

The band started practicing their songs with the new line-up for their first upcoming public show, which was at a local café named "Café Genomfarten". After finding that their show went well and that they recieved a lot of support from locals in the local music scene they soon started to play more and more live shows, mostly at "Café Genomfarten" and another café named "Grand".

### Departures and replacements (2016-2017)

After the recording process of *Descent Into Madness* Martin decided to quit the band after its release due to his mental health. After a short period of searching for a new rythm guitarist and backing vocalist, the band decided on Lucas Fjällrud, whom the band had met through the Musik Direkt/Imagine competitions, as well as having many common friends with him, as they were all part of the local music scene.

During the following year Adrian decided to move to Scotland where his at the time girlfriend Louise Whyte lived. Louise was the one who drew the album cover art for the album *Descent Into Madness*. The band tried to search for a new bass player for a short period of time, but ultimately decided to dissolve the band instead.

### Music Competitions

Eighth Avenue entered a couple of music competitions in their local area as well, in 2015 they competed in "Imagine Sweden" (at the time called "Musik Direkt") and in "Emergenza". In 2016 they again competed in both "Imagine Sweden" and "Emergenza", this time winning the local "Imagine Uppland" so they would represent Uppland in the swedish final of "Imagine Sweden".

## Band Members

### Final members (before the band dissolving):

* Ludwig Alexandersson - Vocals (*2014-2017*), piano (*2015-2017*), drums (*2013-2014*)
* Andreas Forsberg - Lead guitar (*2013-2017*)
* Lucas Fjällrud - Rythm guitar, backing vocals (*2017*)
* William Parkstam - Drums (*2014-2017*)

### Ex-members:

* Martin Widerlöv - Rythm guitar, backing vocals (*2013-2016*)
* Adrian Banfi Johansson - Bass (*2014-2017*)
* Felix Arvidsson - Bass (2013), vocals (*2013-2014*)
* Sebastian Mattsson - Vocals (*2013-2014*)
* Oliver Wallner - Bass (*2013-2014*)

## Discography

The band recorded some demos, including some that they played live, but only released 1 full length album which left many songs out, such as "*What Lies Within*", "*Grey*" and "*Let Me In*".

### Released album/singles

* *Hate At First Sight* *- Grand Edition* (2015)
* *Big Brother (Single)* (2016)
* *Descent Into Madness* (2016)

### Unreleased songs

 Going Wild
 Let Me In
 Like a Prayer (Madonna cover)
 My Serenade
 Sweet Natalie
 Tomorrow Is Too Late
 What Lies Within
 Unnamed 2017 song

## Links

* https://www.facebook.com/eighthavenue2
* https://www.youtube.com/@eighthavenueofficial6130