Entombed’s LG Petrov Dead At 49

Gonzales Photo/Peter Troest/PYMCA-Avalon/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Entombed’s LG Petrov Dead At 49

Gonzales Photo/Peter Troest/PYMCA-Avalon/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

LG Petrov, longtime frontman of the great Swedish metal band Entombed, has died. In a Facebook statement this morning, Petrov’s post-Entombed band Entombed A.D. announced that Petrov died last night. In a Metal Hammer interview last year, Petrov announced that he had been diagnosed with incurable bile duct cancer, and he launched a GoFundMe campaign to help with his medical expenses. Petrov was 49.

As a teenager in 1986, Lars Göran Petrov started out as the drummer for the Stockholm metal band Morbid. Morbid broke up after only releasing two demos; their singer Per “Dead” Ohlin left to join the storied black metal band Mayhem. (Ohlin died by suicide in 1991.) Once Morbid broke up, Petrov became the singer for the death metal band Nihilist, which became Entombed in 1989. Entombed released their classic, influential debut album Left Hand Path on Earache Records in 1990, and they quickly became one of the biggest metal bands in Sweden.

Entombed’s style became known as death ‘n’ roll. It’s as grimy and aggressive and apocalyptic as classic death metal, but it’s built on deep, neck-snap grooves. That made the band sound both tougher and more accessible than their death metal peers. Petrov’s voice — a shredded, whiskey-dipped roar that carried echoes of Motörhead’s Lemmy — was a huge part of that. That voice, along with the massive crunch of Entombed’s guitar sound, made the band influential in realms beyond death metal; you can hear echoes of their sound in generations of punk, hardcore, D-beat, and groove metal.

In the early ’90s, Entombed briefly kicked Petrov out of the band, and they recorded their 1991 sophomore album Clandestine without him. Petrov briefly sang for a band called Comecon. By the end of 1991, though, Petrov had rejoined Entombed, and he sang on their massive 1993 album Wolverine Blues. That LP pushed Entombed further from death metal and closer to the warlike groove metal of bands like Pantera. It remains the band’s best-selling album, and it’s a classic on the level of Left Hand Path.

Entombed continued to tour and record until 2014, when they broke up. Petrov, who did not own the Entombed name, went on to form a new band called Entombed A.D. with most of the band’s lineup at the time of the breakup. Entombed A.D. released three more albums, the most recent of which, is 2019’s Bowels Of Earth. Petrov also sang for a death metal supergroup called Firespawn, which formed in 2012 and released three albums.

Below, check out some of Petrov’s work with Entombed.

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