TIAMAT Frontman Assaulted While Watching Kittens In Greece

12 July 2006

TIAMAT frontman Johan Edlund, who is currently residing in Thessaloniki, Greece with his girlfriend Joanna, posted the following message on his official MySpace profile earlier today (Tuesday, July 11):

"Last night I was enjoying a few cocktails together with my girlfriend and a friend from Russia. When I walked home alone around three o'clock in the morning, I passed a little band of very young kittens. Two of them were black and there was a very cute white one with brown and grey spots. I'd guess they were about ten weeks old and I wanted to take them home but they were too afraid to get close to.

"The night was very hot and the city is quite empty now that the students have [gone] back to the homes of their parents for holidays or just went out to the beaches down south. I sat on a fence watching the cats and I was too awake to stress back home and the streets were dead and mine and it was really such a wonderful night and the moon was full and golden brown.

All of a sudden a car stopped in front of me and two men of my own (ripe) age stepped out. One of them stayed by the car but the second guy shouted something at me which I couldn't understand. He walked up to me and pushed me on my shoulder while repeating his words which were all Greek to me. Then everything happened very fast. I pushed him and then there's hitting, pulling and pushing and rumbling, probably for less that half a minute and then I felt a much harder hit against my face as if hit by something more than a bare fist and I tried to get out of it while making sure my camera was still with me.

The camera bag was destroyed, my shirt was shredded with a bit of blood on it, most of it from my own fists. I went to my girlfriend's place to put ice on my swollen head and face and especially on my destroyed hands. Betadine on the wounds, vodka shots for my nerves. Slept on the sofa and woke up with pain in every limb of my beaten up body.

"I still don't know what the guys wanted from me. Hopefully the guy I was fighting hurts even more than me today!

"I feel quite ashamed today, though I have no reason to. For a short moment I felt as if they knew me and this was kinda planned, but I don't know... Maybe that's just paranoid. Maybe it was just the heat of the situation and if they really wanted to fuck with me, the second guy would have helped his friend when I was hitting back.

"Damn, some idiots just fucking deserve to be shot! What's the fun of attacking a lonely drunken man watching kittens in the street??? They didn't even film it, dammit!!!

"This [photo] was [taken] an hour before, when my face was still recognizable and I could still enjoy an extremely dry Martini."