The idea that we should rip up the rulebooks and start again must be on many musicians’ minds. The system doesn’t work, with little investment in grassroots venues, the unviability of touring internationally and an algorithmic mess saturating a musical landscape––which should remain a vibrant life source in an ever-greying world. Why not go rogue at this point? And why not entrust it to punk’s leading emissaries of screwing up convention to do just that all over again?
That seems to be Backengrillen’s mantra anyway. Three-quarters of the band are already finishing up their revolutionary three-decade tenure as Refused, in a time where we likely needed them most. No matter, as the further decline of civility calls out for this new incarnation’s debut soundtrack: a cavalcade of crumbling musical order, where free jazz and foreboding noise spills from building post-rock passages. There’s a little less immediacy in songcraft from its members’ old style, which is hilarious given Backengrillen’s composition, rehearsal and recording taking place in just three days.
That shift-it-quick improvisational sound does come across. Opener A Hate Inferior hinges on a repeated chord sequence for its backbone, which begins as a beautiful clean guitar loop that gets drowned with gloom and Dennis Lyxzén’s effects-laden howl. Whether during a five minute rush or a twelve minute epic, it’s easy to visualise the instinctive moment the four heads nod to each other to start clattering the fuck out of their instruments. It has the effect of Swans’ Big Sound era stripped back to its raw ingredients, and much like those expert performers, this is a bonded group so aware of each other’s little ticks that crafting a hellscape on the spot is par for the course.
Magnus Flagge and David Sandström are on more restrained rhythm section duties throughout, such as on the lurching title track, while Mats Gustafsson’s saxophone acts to punctuate their sinister pulse. Its call and response with Lyxzén on Dör för långsamt adds a salacious gloss, and the player channels great emotion on A Hate Inferior as if the instrument was an elegiac bugle playing over a wasteland. It also becomes a rabid addition on the propulsive, aptly-titled Repeater II, a groovy blast combining the loosey-goosey noise rock lineage of Scratch Acid through to fellow Swedes Viagra Boys, similar to the latter’s Amphetanarchy. Once you reach closer Socialism Or Barbarism—full of spiky static, hip-hop grooves and shouting—you feel the band’s pressure cooker sound going into overtime.
They certainly achieved their mission of presenting the “self-hatred endemic to the province of Västerbotten from whence the members hail”, and it’s not a stretch to feel that apathy everywhere these days. Getting lost in a maelstrom of tedium (or worse, like any of the content you see online) sucks, so getting lost to freak-out jazz-punk by legends of the game is far more fun. What’s more, Backengrillen has already promised more to come very soon––building up a new bank of rulebook-ripping music for everyone that needs a bloody great break. Welcome to the new year or whatever.
For fans of: Swans, Mamaleek, Viagra Boys
‘Backengrillen’ by Backengrillen is released on 23rd January on Svart Records.
Words by Elliot Burr
