Dissection was formed in 1989 by guitarist/vocalist Jon Nödveidt and bass player Peter Palmdahl. Earlier they played in a thrash metal band called Siren´s Yell, a band existing between 1987 and 1989. They started writing songs and in the spring of 1990 drummer Ole Öhman joined the band. In 1990 they released their first demo called "The Grief Prophecy" and a little later they signed a deal with the French Corpsegrinder Records to release a 7" EP called "Into Infinite Obscurity" in 1991. In the beginning of 1992 they recorded their second demo called "The Somberlain" which helped them sign a one album deal with Swedish No Fashion Records. They now recorded their debut album called "The Somberlain" like the demo. Because of delays and label problems it wasn´t released until December 1993. The album was engineered by famous musician/producer Dan Swanö and it was dedicated to Euronymous of Mayhem, a good friend of the band. The guy who ran No Fashion had signed too many bands and therefore he got himself into financial problems and delays. About the same time that the debut album was released he sold the company to the major Swedish metal distributor House Of Kicks. House Of Kicks didn´t give the album any promotion at all but still about 8000 copies were sold.

In 1995 guitarist John Zweetslot had to leave the band which was a big setback since he was an important song-writer. He was getting lazy and didn´t bother coming to the rehearsals so there was no other way to go. John almost immediately started a new band called Cardinal Sin together with former members of the Swedish black metal band Marduk. The new guitarist was Johan Norman, a long time friend of the band. In October 1998 German major label Nuclear Blast signed Johan Norman's new band Reaper, later renamed Soulreaper.

 

In early January 2006 it was announced that the band were going to release their new album "Reinkaos" through their own label Black Horizon Music.