Jonny Lindqvist

Jonny Lindqvist — Swedish vocalist — took Nocturnal Rites' microphone in 2000, and his arrival changed the band's direction. Nocturnal Rites came from the Swedish power metal of the 1990s, with high vocals and fantasy subject matter. Lindqvist brought a voice of another register — lower, rougher, with an affinity for hard rock and modern melodic metal — and the repertoire shaped itself to it. Already on Afterlife (2000) and above all on Shadowland (2002), the band abandons fantasy and writes more direct lyrics, with heavier riffs and choruses built for the voice it now had. That is an inversion of the usual logic: normally the singer adapts to the band's sound. Here the sound reorganised itself around the singer, and the result was the group's best-known phase — Shadowland, New World Messiah (2004) and Grand Illusion (2006), records that brought Nocturnal Rites close to contemporary melodic metal without the falsetto and mythology of classic power metal. He stayed in the band through the hiatus between 2008 and 2017 and the return with Phoenix, making him the longest-serving singer in the group's history.