5 Songs That Scared Avatar’s Johannes Eckerstrom As a Kid

Here are five songs that scared Avatar’s Johannes Eckerström as a kid.

Even today as an adult, music can still conjure enough emotional weight to instill fear and freight within you. But it’s a lot more common when you’re a kid and it’s a powerful feeling that can last a lifetime, flooding back whenever that scary song from your youth comes on.

Perhaps these five songs offer unique insight into the musician Eckerström is today. After all, spine-chilling and spooky is Avatar’s fast lane.

We’ll get to those songs in a moment, but first…

What You Need to Know About Avatar

From: Sweden

First Album: Thoughts of No Tomorrow (2006)

New Album: Don’t Go In the Forest (2025)

Avatar have been thrilling the metal masses for most of the 21st century, evolving from their melodic death metal roots into a groove-laden alternative metal act with as much musical appeal as visual appeal. The band finds comfort in the odd and eccentric with impressively cohesive songwriting talents that invite you to partake in these peculiar twists and turns.

Their latest — Don’t Go In the Forest — is no different.

“It has become a necessity to me over the years to be able to answer one question: Why is this important? It can’t be just another album. We need to discover something, try something else. It has to come from the heart. What is being said matters,” says Eckerström of the opening song “Tonight We Must Be Warriors.”

“In days of isolation and despair, maybe we need to be reminded that we are not alone? We are one of many,” he continues, “Maybe we also need a reminder that the burden is on our shoulders? To get it done, we need to do the fighting ourselves. In our shared pain, we find solidarity.”

Avatar, “Tonight We Must Be Warriors” Music Video

Buy the Loudwire exclusive limited edition vinyl copy of Avatar’s new album — only 200 copies!

“The secret ingredient is that we still feel like we’re just getting started. Don’t Go In The Forest is an album filled to the brim with stuff we’ve never done before,” Eckerström continues. “It’s all songs and concepts we haven’t been close to touch until now. The mind is wild and we have lost ourselves in the darkest woods, filled with memories, and fantasies. Forbidden thoughts that must be spoken. It would have been impossible to make this album at any other time than now. That’s all we ever wanted and I think you’ll find it’s all you ever wanted, too.”

Don’t Go In the Forest drops on Oct. 31 and will be immediately followed by a headlining U.S. tour that launched on Nov. 5 and wraps up Dec. 7. The special guests on this run are Alien Weaponry and SpiritWorld. For tickets and to see all of the dates, head to Avatar’s website.

Now, onto those scary songs!

5 Songs That Scared Avatar’s Johannes Eckerström As a Kid

Black Sabbath, “Black Sabbath” (demo version)

A childhood friend, also named Johannes (R.I.P.), got The Ozzman Cometh when we were kids.

I joined a long line of kids who’ve been getting spooked by this one through the decades and started chasing that high for the rest of their lives. The rawness of the demo version just added to it.

Gene Simmons, “Radioactive”

Same childhood friend, just a little earlier as we were into KISS before we realized we were into heavy music.

Once the song actually kicks in there was a moment of, “Oh, that’s it?,” but the horror sounds in the start did the trick and was really the only thing on the album that went on repeat, except maybe “When You Wish Upon A Star.”

Mark Snow, The X-Files Theme

I have strangely fond memories of catching some X-Files while still being a bit too young. The episode with the inbred family left a scar [editor’s note: we’re scarred from that one too].

I would have the radio on when going to sleep and remixes of this one was quite a thing for a while. Drifting off to sleep to that made for some interesting dreams.

John Carpenter, “Main Title”

Again, seeing horror movies when you’re “too young” is a rite of passage for many of us. This was the big one for me at the time. The atmosphere still holds up.

Koji Kondo, Super Mario Bros. “Castle Theme”

This was the first time that music had me convinced I was going to die.

Sure, it was just a video game and it was because I sucked at it, but the dread was real.