Trivia / Scar Symmetry

• Ascended Extra: Fredrik Groth was the band's guitar tech before becoming an additional live guitarist after Jonas Kjellgren took a hiatus from touring (and then ended up leaving the band altogether). He's since gone back to more of a backstage role now that Benjamin Ellis is in the band.
• Creative Differences: The gist of why Christian Alvestam was kicked out. Per has made it clear that while he still respects Christian as a musician, he has absolutely no respect for him as a person. Christian's habit of doing things like rejecting tour offers without the consent or knowledge of the other members because he didn't like touring didn't inspire any goodwill. His habit of writing parts that he knew he couldn't consistently pull off live because he had no intention of touring in support of it didn't help things either. The latter was also the reason why they went for a dual-vocalist setup, as he was sloppy to begin with and the idea had entered their heads long before he was fired.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Christian doesn't look back too fondly on his time with the band, but it's less about his musical contributions and more because he wasn't in a good place with them. While he's normally very interactive with his fans on social media, he will seldom acknowledge comments pertaining to his tenure. He once responded to someone who missed him in the band by saying, "I don't. Time to move on."
  • Per has implied that he feels like this about Holographic Universe. He doesn't like that particular album very much, due to all the difficulty the band was having around the time it was being written and recorded. It seems others in the band share his view, as many of the songs from it are never performed live.
• Development Hell / Extremely Lengthy Creation: The entire The Singularity trilogy. Per and Henrik started writing the second album in the trilogy in 2015. The album's recording didn't start until 2017, though, and the full title (The Singularity (Phase II: Xenotaph)) wasn't unveiled until 2018. Xenotaph itself was finally released in 2023, but the band still has to write and record the final part of the trilogy!
  • For what it's worth, Per has said that Henrik has already written the entire story arc of the Singularity trilogy. So, it's only a matter of time before it's finished.
• He Also Did: Scar Symmetry's current and former members have been involved in a lot of other projects.
  • Former bassist Andreas Holma was in Hypocrisy from 2000-2006.
  • Per Nilsson has been the guitarist of Swedish prog rock band Kaipa since 2006. He was also a touring guitarist for Meshuggah from 2017-2021, filling in for Fredrik Thordendal while he took a hiatus from most of his commitments with the band.
  • Henrik Ohlsson has been involved in several other bands and musical projects, including some where he is a vocalist and/or guitarist.
  • Benjamin Ellis was in the British death metal band Bloodshot Dawn and the British/Taiwanese Melodic Death Metal/Industrial Metal band Mera.
  • Current harsh vocalist Roberth Karlsson was already prolific in the metal scene nearly two decades before joining, beginning his career when he was only a teenager as the singer for Dan Swano's experimental death metal band Pan.Thy.Monium. He then went on to sing for Edge of Sanity for one record. He currently fronts the OSDM band Facebreaker, along with several other underground projects.
  • Current clean vocalist Lars Palmqvist is also the vocalist of the band Dathua.
  • Christian Alvestam was active in music well before the band was even formed. He started off with the progressive death metal band Unmoored, who released their first album in 1999. He's maintained a lot of activity since his departure as well, most notably as the singer for Solution .45 and Miseration. He also released a solo album in 2012.
  • Founding guitarist Jonas Kjellgren may have became big with the band, but it was far from his beginning. He provided vocals for both underground death 'n' roll band Dellamorte and thrash group Carnal Forge, and gained recognition playing guitar for Centinex. He's also stayed active in several other projects since leaving the band, including being a member of Raubtier and Bourbon Boys, as well as Ironmaster, where he returns to his death metal roots and works with Roberth again.
• No-Hit Wonder: Despite never charting a single song, they have a very loyal fan base, and Per is a well-respected figure in guitar circles. The closest they've come to having a hit song are "Morphogenesis" from Holographic Universe and "The Anomaly" from The Unseen Empire.
• Promoted Fanboy: Benjamin Ellis. He was a huge fan of the band before he joined, and he even previously toured with them when he was a member of Bloodshot Dawn.
  • Inverted with Roberth Karlsson, as his work with Facebreaker was a big influence on Christian Alvestam, who often went to him for guidance on his harsh vocals. They also both played together in the band Solar Dawn before Scar Symmetry was formed (Alvestam on vocals and bass and Karlsson on guitar).
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor:
  • The smoking gun for Christian Alvestam's firing was him rejecting tour offers without the rest of the band's knowledge or consent.
  • Andreas Holma was kicked out in early 2019 when he bailed on a set of Japanese shows that he couldn't make due to a scheduling conflict with another band. From Per's recollection of what happened, he was kicked out because he knew about those shows for months and had every opportunity to let them know if there was going to be a conflict so they could get a fill-in. But, he said nothing until the final few weeks, well past the point where they could have gotten a visa for a fill-in.
• Spiritual Successor: Christian's band Solution .45 is largely a glimpse into what they would've sounded like had they leaned further into their Holographic Universe sound.
• Throw It In!:
  • "Neuromancers" spawned from a riff that Per randomly came up with while being filmed at NAMM.
  • In the earlier days of the band, when Per and Jonas wrote all the music together, they would often throw in nonsense lyrics as placeholders when they were writing the vocal parts. Henrik would then write the real lyrics later. Per has said that Henrik would try to make the real lyrics sound as close to the nonsense ones as possible!