The Hellacopters

[4] After the release of Grande Rock, which featured additional guitar playing from both Lindström and Hellberg, Robert Dahlqvist was hired as a full-time lead guitarist in 1999.

[7] In October 2021 the band announced that they had signed with the record label Nuclear Blast to release a new album in the spring of 2022.

The band name was inspired by a magazine article discovered by Andersson and Dregen while on tour with Entombed in San Francisco.

The article was about how the CIA was spying with helicopters on marijuana fields in Mexico and that the Mexicans called them "Hellacopters.

[2] Anders "Boba Fett" Lindström, guitarist of the Swedish rock band The Diamond Dogs, was then recruited to play keyboards shortly before they supported Kiss on their Scandinavian dates in June 1997.

The proper way of handcrafting, doing it probably the way they did do it back then...Grande Rock became the band's first album to break into the Swedish top ten, before dropping out of the list after one week.

[14] For the ensuing tour, the band considered recruiting an American guitarist but hired Robert Dahlqvist.

[5] With Dahlqvist as a full-time replacement for Dregen the band set out on tour along with Wayne Kramer, The Nomads and Powder Monkeys.

High Visibility spent twelve weeks on the Swedish charts[14] and was certified gold in that nation.

[17] High Visibility was later released in the United States and the band's tour was chronicled in the documentary Goodnight Cleveland.

The title is a reference to the mockumentary This Is Spınal Tap in which Derek Smalls yells "Hello Cleveland" to an unseen audience while the band tries to find their way onto the stage.

[22] The title track also spent seven weeks on the Swedish singles chart and gained significant airplay on radio and TV.

[14] The band also had the opportunity to be the opening act for The Rolling Stones and ZZ Top in Stockholm and Helsinki.

Nicke Andersson worked on his side project The Solution with Scott Morgan, releasing the album Communicate!

[1] Eriksson and Lindstrom also did a small DJ tour in Italy before joining up with the rest of the band to record and release Rock & Roll Is Dead in 2005.

The track "Nothing Terribly New" was also mentioned several times as one of E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt's favorite garage rock songs.

[26][27] On 12 October 2007, The Hellacopters announced they would be breaking up after releasing their seventh full-length album Head Off, a collection of cover songs.

[14] The last Hellacopters shows were played at Debaser Medis in Stockholm 25 and 26 October; the concerts were filmed and streamed live on the band's MySpace page.

"[12][31][32] Frontman Nicke Andersson continues to work with his other band Death Breath, originally a side project while he was with The Hellacopters, and plans to record a solo album.

The book, The Hellacopters, du kérosène dans les veines by Rudy Charis, was published by Camion Blanc and is due to be released in English in 2018.

The band's distributor Sound Pollution stated that Dahlqvist died accidentally at home, having drowned in a bathtub following an epileptic seizure.

At the time of his death, he had several concerts and appearances scheduled for the coming weeks, and had nearly completed recording a solo album under the pseudonym Strängen.

[37] In April 2016, the band announced that their original lineup would be reuniting for the 20th anniversary of the release of their debut album, Supershitty to the Max!, initially playing the 2016 Sweden Rock Festival.

The band also announced the release of an exclusive 12-inch vinyl record, with two tracks ("My Mephistophelean Creed" and "Don't Stop Now") written during the Supershitty to the Max!

[10] On the band's later releases, Andersson's vocals incorporated soul influences from his and Scott Morgans side project The Solution.

Original guitarist and founding member Dregen performing live
Kenny Håkansson in front of a By the Grace of God backdrop