Punk & Hardcore
Metal Blade Records · 9 October 2026
“Fat Man Hellscape” runs one minute fifty-nine and is the shortest of the twelve; the longest, “Tangled Steel Mask”, runs three forty-seven and closes the record. Nothing in between breaks three minutes apart from the single, which leaves “Howl from Underground” at thirty minutes and fifty-seven seconds of Swedish crust with the pedal down. What’s changed from the last ten years is who recorded it: the band stopped self-producing and went to Necromorbus Studio with Lawrence Mackrory, whose credits include Meshuggah, Katatonia, Paradise Lost and Bloodbath. Out 9 October on Metal Blade.
You can hear straight away what that bought them. “Caveman Motherfuck” opens at two thirty-eight and the guitars of Erik Norberg and Jocke Rydbjer have a definition that earlier records buried under the general sludge; the drums of David “Dadde” Stark, back in the band after a first stint from 2002 to 2015, sit in front of the beat rather than behind it. “Cold War Bootlicker”, the single at a flat three minutes, gains most from that clarity, because the lyric has to land whole: it’s about false opposites, which the band sums up as two heads fighting over the same body.
All twelve tracks live inside the same tempo band and the same running time, and from “Headhunting” (two fifty-six) onwards it’s hard to name which one you’re hearing without checking. Mackrory improved the sound and left the writing alone, and that tells most in the second half, where “Cosmic Meatgrinder” (two seventeen) and “Seeking Scapegoats” (two fourteen) go by unmarked. The titles work against them: on a record that wants to talk seriously about fear and obedience, “Caveman Motherfuck” and “Cosmic Meatgrinder” cost the lyric weight before a note is played.
Micke Dahl still sings as though each line is the last he’ll be allowed, and Johan Erken keeps the bass in that thick register that’s half Swedish d-beat tradition and half metal. The band calls it “lycanthro punk” and explains it as a force that refuses to be tamed, a restlessness that outlives civilisation; put that way it sounds a size too big, though “Man Is Wolf to Man” (two thirty-five) carries it reasonably well. It’s their twelfth album and the first since “Life Knife Death” (2024).
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre