Magnus Rosen
Mission of Peace and Friendship

18.09.2026

Some musicians have a personality that goes way beyond music - even though what they do in music is already immense. Swedish bass player Magnus Rosén has had a long, successful and very diverse career that stretches over decades. Apart from playing with Hammerfall in their classic period and collaborating with such respected artists as Jorn Lande, Tony Martin, Joe Lynn Turner, etc., he has performed with orchestras, done one-man shows around the world and recorded numerous solo works in various styles mostly centered around his bass. Three years ago he released two rock records with Magnus Rosén Band- an album called “It’s Time To Rock The World Again” and an instrumental EP, “Outside The Rock Box” - which demonstrated yet another facet of his creativity. Now with Wanikiya Record/Promotion bringing both of these releases back into the spotlight we decided to reconnect with Magnus - 23 years after our first interview, which took place backstage at Germany’s Bang Your Head! festival - in a whole different era and reality, as it may seem when we look back. We got in touch with Magnus when he was in his car riding the streets of Gothenburg, and spent an entire hour speaking about the above-mentioned album and EP, other projects he has been involved with, both current and old, and of course about his positive and proactive outlook on life which is very rare to find in rock or metal these days.

“It’s Time To Rock The World Again” is your first rock album with your name in the title. It brings together a lot of musicians and a lot of influences from very different musical styles. What was the starting point for this album? Did you have the complete idea of the album from the very beginning, or did it develop step by step?

I did a tour in Brazil, I think it was 2017 or 2018, with a Brazilian band called Shadowside. After the tour I had one day left, and I stayed in the house of our drummer, Fabio Buitvidas. We were having a beer, and he said, “You are my really good friend, my house is always yours”. I said, “Thank you very much!” And then he said, “My recording studio is also always yours”. I said, “Do you mean that?” He said “yes”. I said, “OK, can I start to record my new album with Magnus Rosén Band?” He said “yes”. Everything started there. From the beginning the idea was to make one album, not an album and a mini-album, so we started to record instrumental music, like most of my solo albums. But this time I wanted to have some songs with vocals. We did about five instrumental songs and five songs with voices. And then an idea came to me, I decided to make “It’s Time To Rock The World”, an entire album with vocals, and a mini-album, “Outside The Rox Box”, that’s instrumental. Everything started like this. Then I also decided that these two releases will be about the influences that I’ve had. My music life is now 49 years long, I’ve played the bass for 49 years, and there are many bands that have inspired me through my life. These two releases have flavors from the bands and musicians that I love. When you listen to both albums, you will recognize influences from Metallica, Iron Maiden, or AC/DC, or other bands. I wanted these albums to cover quite a wide spectrum of rock music.

Magnus Rosén Band brings together two musicians from Brazil and three musicians from Sweden. How often do you get all together in the same room? Or do you do everything over the internet?

These days we do most of the things over the internet. I started to record the album in Brazil with my bass parts, and then I invited guests, so it’s the easiest way to record over the internet, but the most pleasant way is to record together, of course.

Apart from your original songs, there are several cover versions on the album. Why did you choose these particular songs? I mean, of all the songs by The Beatles, why did you choose “Something”? Of all the songs you recorded with Hammerfall, why did you choose “Hearts On Fire”?

Good questions! (laughs) When I was younger, I was listening to The Beatles, and also to The Rolling Stones, and “Something” is a song I really like. I think it’s a beautiful song, because of that I decided to pick it out – just because I love it. Of course, The Beatles were one of my inspirations through life, and the same is with other songs, for example, the Bill Withers song (“Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone”)  also has flavors from the time I grew up at, old rock music. This old rock music started to pave my way as a rock musician, that’s how everything started, this is what I have in my memories from the 60s and the 70s, and that is why I made this choice of songs. As to “Hearts On Fire”, I thought it was fun, because “Hearts On Fire” was the biggest song that we had with Hammerfall. That is also like a “thank you” for those 10 years that I played with Hammerfall. 

I should also say that for the song by The Beatles I invited a guitarist from ABBA (Janne Schaffer), I know him a little, so he plays on the song, and it makes the song really nice, I think. I also have the singer from Secret Service, Mikael Erlandsson, a great singer. For the Bill Withers song, “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone”, I invited Tony Martin, he was a singer of Black Sabbath for 10 years. I think it was a nice combination – bringing different musicians from different music styles together on this rock’n’roll road, let’s call it like that. (laughs)

Bill Withers was a soul and rhythm and blues singer, and Tony Martin is the singer that most of the people know from Black Sabbath, he had never sung anything like that before. Why did you give him this song? Or did he choose it himself?

No, it was my idea. I think it’s so interesting to get musicians from different backgrounds… On this song there’s Tony Martin from Black Sabbath and also Janne Schaffer from ABBA, Janne recorded 50 songs with ABBA, so this is a very interesting combination – them and me from the heavy metal background, and then we meeting a song from the past, if you know what I mean. It’s interesting to see what will come out – different backgrounds add a new flavor to the old song. I think it’s interesting because of that. 

Another guest singer that you have on this album is Chitral Somapala (ex-Firewind, ex-Power Quest). You had a band called The Sign together with him a few years ago, and you planned to do an album, but, as far as we know, it never happened. What went wrong with this band?

It's so great that you check this out! Yes, we put this band together, and we went to Sri Lanka, and it was a great performance there, I have very beautiful memories of it. I don’t really know why we didn’t go on with everything, probably it was other things in life. Chitral is touring around the world with music from Sri Lanka, but he also still sings rock music. I don’t really know why we stopped that (laughs), but I can say that we are putting it back together, not under the name of The Sign, but we talked with each other a few days ago, and now we have a band that we will start in the beginning of 2027.

Can you also say a few words about the EP, “Outside The Rock Box”? Why does it only have six songs, why didn’t you do a full length instrumental album to go hand in hand with “It’s Time To Rock The World Again”?

When I started to record in Brazil in Fabio’s house, my idea from the beginning was to make it instrumental. Then I thought, “No, I will have some songs with vocals”. And then I said, “No, I will do a whole album with vocals”. (laughs) By then we had already recorded some instrumental songs, and I thought that it would be better to put all the songs with vocals on the album and the rest of the songs on a separate album. Some people who like instrumental music may be not so much into the other kind of music, and I wanted to separate them a little – maybe people who like music with vocals are not so interested in listening to five or six songs that are purely instrumental. That’s why I decided to have one little album with instrumental things and one album with vocals. The six songs on the EP are the songs I had left from the original idea of doing an instrumental album.

There is a song on the EP that is called “Automatic Different”, and it is based on several songs by Michael Jackson, and it also incorporates a sample of his voice. What is the meaning of such an unusual track? And what do you think of Michael Jackson as an artist?

First of all, I think he’s a great artist, one of the best maybe in this music style, “the King of Pop”. I really like his music, and I also like the way I saw him through interviews and this kind of things. He looked really calm, like a very nice person. I also think that he shows a little bit how crazy the world is today. He was somehow very different, he couldn’t really join our lives, regular lives, because he was so famous. When someone is so famous, you get a lot of power, and he was also very rich - he was able to buy a big part of the company that released his music. And then the dirty things started. In this world the people who have power don’t really care a lot of times if it’s true or not true, they only care about the power. I think he got a lot of dirt from other people, because there were a lot of rumors about him, and I wanted to put some light on the story around that. But the most important thing is that it’s great songs. I thought it was fun to mix those fantastic riffs from Michael Jackson’s songs together with my fusion bass.

The album, “It’s Time To Rock The World Again”, and the EP originally came out three years ago. What kind of reaction did they receive? We mean, the album is very diverse with many different songs – what kind of audience has listened to it and liked it so far? Are they metalheads, are they rock lovers, are they ABBA fans or Hammerfall fans?

(laughs) Yes, that is my way of doing things! I’m doing a lot of things that are so different from each other – I record with a symphonic orchestra, I have done fusion albums, I work a little bit with folk music, and my platform is and will always be rock music. For me it’s not so weird, but your question is really interesting: what kind of people would like to have this kind of album? It’s not a rock album, it’s not a folk album, it’s a mix. I think I only reach the people with an open mind, like myself, that can enjoy this innovation in music styles. Maybe some rock fans, maybe some fusion fans, I don’t really know. For me it was not so important what market it will come to, it was important for me to express myself as a person that I am. But I’ve got good reviews for both the EP and the album, “It’s Time To Rock The World Again” is also a really wide album, it’s from the 60s to today. And I’m so happy for that.

What is the current status of Magnus Rosén Band? Do you play shows with it? Do you have any plans for a new album?

My idea was to do shows with the band. The only small problem is that we live in Brazil and in Sweden. (laughs) To play with this band, I need big shows to afford bringing the band together. But that was the idea. If I look back at my life, I have done some really big great performances with just the name Magnus Rosén Band – we have played at really big football games, where there is almost 100,000 people in the audience, and we played before the game started. I also used the name Magnus Rosén Band for playing at the World Transplant Games – I world the World Championship song, and we performed it with Magnus Rosén Band, you can check it out on YouTube, and there’s also the story behind it (the song is called “Captain Of The Ship”, and it was played at the grand opening of the World Transplant Games in 2011 – ed.). Right now, with this line-up on Magnus Rosén Band as on the album, my wish is of course to play live with it.

And what about a new album? Do you already have any ideas for a follow-up to “It’s Time To Rock The World Again”?

I do so many things! (laughs) Next year I will release an album with Bai Bang, it’s glam rock, then I will release an album with Bleckhorn, it’s Viking rock music, and then another album with Autumn’s Child, it’s more of AOR/rock. At the moment I’m think about how I will do the next Magnus Rosén album. I think the next one will be more focused on a single music style, like hard rock / metal, somewhere in that area. 

As we said before, the drummer and the guitarist of Magnus Rosén Band are from Brazil, Chitral is from Sri Lanka, Tony Martin is from England, and probably some other musicians involved in the album are from other countries. Is it by accident, or is it your intention to bring people from so many countries together to do music? Would it be correct to say that this is part of your message?

Yes! Good questions! First of all, my life has been around the world. I travel a lot, and I have a lot of friends from different parts of the world. For me it was not so confusing to use my friends on the album. That is one part of the answer. The other part is that I believe in a world of friendship. We all know that the world is upside down, and we also know there’s a lot of lies among nations about each other. That is really sad. But some of us can see through this lies a little. And I think it’s even more important to bring love and friendship – this is my message in life. You can say this is also the message in this kind of collaborations with different musicians from different parts of the world. I don’t judge anyone by the color of their skin, or by what nation they come from. We are all humans, and I think without all the bullshit going around on the internet we are not enemies, we can be friends. I can tell you that my own relatives, not my grandmother or grandfather, but my grandfather’s father’s father’s father (laughs), we come from Russia, from Karelia, and that is also interesting, I think. Both on my mother’s side and my father’s side – it’s a long way back. 

With Chitral and The Sign you played in Sri Lanka. You have also played in a lot of other places that most people in Europe and Russia will call exotic – Bolivia, Oman and even Kurdistan. What was the country that impressed you the most? 

(laughs) Thank you for a very good question! It’s hard to say because I think all of them are so interesting! I have been to China maybe 14 times, and it’s really impressive. I love to visit countries where you can feel the culture and the roots from the past, and that you can really see in some of these countries. I wish I could play in Russia, and maybe when this crazy war is over, I will come. 

It is also our wish, it’s exactly the same! We can’t wait to be closer to Europe again.

And it should be like that. We are neighbors. I don’t think we should get political in this interview too much, but I hope they will find a peaceful way, so we can join each other again. Anyway, I can’t pick just one country, I can’t say, “This country is the most impressive!” But I like to come to places where I can feel the past, if you know what I mean.

Apart from Magnus Rosén Band, you have recently started a new band called Legacy Of Souls with David Shankle and Anton Darusso, and it’s also international – David is from the United States, and Anton is originally from Russia, but now he lives in Costa Rica. How did the three of you come together? 

It's so many things. (laughs) The whole story started quite simple, like most of the things. I got a message from, I think, a Swedish guy, he writes music, and he asked me, “Can you play some bass on a song?” I know what it was, I didn’t know about the other musicians, and I thought, “I can do it! It’s easy for me to do!” I recorded my part, and maybe a few months later I heard from this guy, I think his name is Lars, again. He contacted me and showed me this Legacy Of Souls concept. Then I also saw who was playing in the band. Everything happened through a simple message on the internet, and now it’s Legacy Of Souls. Things can happen like that too, in a really simple way. Let’s see what will happen with that.

Do you have plans for an album with Legacy Of Souls, or will you continue releasing standalone singles?

I don’t know, but I think we will do a few more singles, as we need to see if people are interested in Legacy Of Souls. I think in this band that is the direction – if people like it, then we will go on with it. Different bands are created in different ways. When I do Magnus Rosén Band, I don’t care so much if anything happens with it, I will do it anyway because it’s my pleasure. When it’s a project, it can be in another way – you can do a few songs to see if the market is interested in it. So let’s see what happens.

You also do one-man bass shows where it’s just you and your bass guitar. Could you describe such shows a bit for those who have never attended them? What setlist do you usually have?

It’s so interesting with those. I’ve played the bass for 49 years, and I’ve always been so interested in the bass and in what can I do with the bass. At the same time, as a bass player you always need other musicians and bands. Then I thought, “I’d like to be free with music, I like to play in play in bands, but I also like to play even if I don’t have a band”. It’s easier for traveling when you’re just one person, it does not cost so much. I was so interested in bass lines when I started to play the bass, my wish when I bought my first bass was to play a bass line. Now I have played a thousand bass lines (laughs), and I still think it’s such fun to see what I can do with bass. Because I have rock music as a platform, I don’t sound like other fusion and jazz bass players that also make solo bass concerts, because they have a different platform. My platform makes it a little bit unique. The songs I play are from art music and a little bit from classical music - a little bit like on the album where I mix rock music with fusion, some parts are more meditative, and some parts are from the opera scene – even if I don’t sing, the melody is from there. If I do a whole show, it’s two hours of music, two hours of bass playing. 

We wish we could attend it in person, unfortunately it’s a problem nowadays. Let’s hope it will change. 

Let’s hope for peace, because I would love to visit Russia and, if possible, make this one-man-band tour Russia with a mission of peace and friendship! 

That would be fantastic! But we still have a few questions, if you don’t mind. A few years ago you released a book called “The Bass In My Heart”. How did you like being a writer? 

I liked it very much! For some reason, I write a lot on the Internet, for example, on my Facebook. I don’t say I write well, but it’s easy for me to write. I have so much on my mind (laughs), and I like to share it with other people – always in a peaceful and friendly way. When I got this question from a book agency, they asked me if I’d like to write a book, I didn’t need to think about that, I said, “Yes, I would like to do it”, because I write so much anyway. First I said, “I wouldn’t like to write a biography, because I think there are so many musicians out there that write their bios”. I said, “I don’t like to write that”. In the end, it’s partly my biography anyway, but there’s a lot about my way to react to the world, about how I see it, and about a more spiritual way of thinking too. The book is also about my music life, because that is my life. The book starts when I was young, I didn’t spend so much time on that part, but you get an idea about who I am with this beginning of the book. For example, when I was a kid, I thought that all human beings were good people. I didn’t know that evil people existed, I thought everybody was good. That was my start in life. And that is how I like to see life and other people, I think some people didn’t grow up with love on their minds - unfortunately for them and also unfortunately for us. And some people grew up with a mind full of love. You can feel this tension in the book somehow.

By the way, is it available in English? 

Yes, it is. 

Then we have to get it somehow. Unfortunately we don’t speak Swedish.

But you speak very good English! It’s me who could be better. (everybody laughs)

Oh, it doesn’t matter. They say that as long as you manage to get the message across, the grammar is not so important. (everybody laughs) Back in 2006, you did an album called “Arose” with singer Jenny Berggren from Ace Of Base. Is it true that you met her at a demonstration against the closing of a music school? 

Yes, that’s right. I stand up for culture and for the people, so I was there. It was close to the place where I live. I think culture and music are so important, maybe much more important than people can think. So I was there, I played outside the school and stood up for students, and she was there too.

Do you know what Jenny is doing at the moment? Are you still in contact?

I don’t really know. I heard a rumor that they have played a little bit with Ace Of Base in certain places, but I’m not really sure about that. We don’t keep in touch so much. We know each other, she was on the album, and we did some performances and actually some more recordings, but they were never released. You know, when you’re busy, and your way doesn’t cross the other person’s way, sometimes ten years may pass before you meet again.

What do you think about the use of artificial intelligence in music? 

I am very skeptical. I am skeptical of all artificial intelligence, because I think what they created makes human beings more worthless, if you know what I mean. These machines can create nice things for the ear, but we need humans, we don’t need machines. I think we should really care about art that humans can do, not about art that machines can do, because otherwise in the end we don’t need humans anymore. I’m very negative about that, I see that it’s so easy to make fantastic things, and that is scary. I think this stuff should be real. Now when they make these machines that create things like music for humans, I think it’s even more important to play live. We need contact with each other, we don’t need contact with machines. That is my opinion about that.

Magnus Rosén on the Internet: https://magnusrosen.com/ 
Magnus Rosén Band on the Internet: https://magnusrosenband.com/ 

Special thanks to Mr. Jack (Wanikiya Record/Promotion) for arranging this interview

Interview by Roman Patrashov, Natalia “Snakeheart” Patrashova
Photos used courtesy of Wanikiya Record/Promotion
September 11, 2026
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