Eternal Evil by Scott Bradshaw
The history of Swedish metal could fill a library. (So far, it’s filled two excellent books: Ika Johannesson and Jon Jefferson Klingberg’s Blood Fire Death: The Swedish Metal Story and Daniel Ekeroth’s Swedish Death Metal.) Some of the genre’s most enduring movements began in the Scandinavian nation. Bathory essentially invented the black metal sound that a cadre of young nihilists from neighboring Norway would turn into a global phenomenon. In the ’90s, parallel death metal scenes emerged in Stockholm (Entombed, Dismember) and Gothenburg (Dark Tranquillity, At the Gates), and both styles continue to inspire scores of imitator bands. There was a Candlemass-led epic doom boom, and back in the ’70s, Heavy Load played a raucous version of traditional metal that would cross the Atlantic and morph into U.S. power metal. As a sprawling country with a population only slightly larger than New York City’s, Sweden has always punched above its weight in matters of heavy metal.
One sound that hasn’t always received its due is Swedish thrash. Unlike the early U.S. scene, which established the genre’s platonic ideal with seminal releases by bands like Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, Swedish thrash cross-pollinated with black and death metal early and often. Late ’80s demos by bands like Mefisto, Morbid, and Merciless forged the blueprint; if those bands had come along a few years later, they probably would have bought HM-2 pedals and thrown themselves fully into death metal. As it was, they played a warped, speed-obsessed version of thrash that incorporated the nascent sounds of the more extreme subgenres. Merciless would have the biggest impact, releasing their debut full-length The Awakening in 1990 on Euronymous’s Deathlike Silence Productions—catalog no. ANTI-MOSH 001. That same year, Entombed would release their epoch-defining Left Hand Path, likely scuttling a true Swedish thrash explosion.
The Awakening still hits like a hurricane, though, and its influence on the next few generations of Swedish thrash – headlined by bands like Nifelheim, Repugnant, and Antichrist – is undeniable. But those bands never coalesced into a coherent, globally recognized scene, and Merciless’s mutant thrash remains a far more cultish concern than, say, the classic albums by their German contemporaries in Sodom and Destruction. Today, a crop of bands whose members weren’t even born when The Awakening came out are lighting a way forward for Swedish thrash. They’re inspired by Merciless and their progeny, but also by Dissection and Kreator, Sarcófago and Slayer, Tormentor and Venom. They’re a diverse group, but together, they’re forming what feels like the first major Swedish thrash scene to hit the world stage since the late ’80s.
“For a lot of years, I’ve been careful with calling it a scene, because I feel it’s very hard to define what a scene is,” says 19-year-old Sarcator guitarist and vocalist Mateo Tervonen. “Does it have to be a location in Sweden? Is it the whole country, age span, genre? But now, in the end, you can say it’s a scene, because the fact is that it is [ages] 12 to 20, youth bands, playing metal music, supporting each other, and also doing shows together.”
“Bands we love, like Antichrist, Beastiality, and Insane, they’re people that just wanted to play music for their friends. They got a little name in Sweden, but it’s not really that ambitious,” says Eternal Evil guitarist and vocalist Adrian Tobar, a scene elder at 20. “This wave, right now, people are so fucking serious about what they’re doing, and I have a good feeling that this scene will take over the world someday.”
“In my opinion, this is something that’s gonna be talked about in Swedish music history in 30, 40 years,” Tobar adds. If he’s right about that – and I think he might be – consider this guide your chance to get in on the ground floor of the New Wave of Swedish Thrash.
The Big Three
Sarcator
Compact Disc (CD), T-Shirt/Shirt
“As far as I can remember, I’ve always had a guitar in my hand,” Mateo Tervonen says. “I started when I was like 5 or 6. I know there’s pictures of me when I’m younger than that, holding [my dad’s] big guitar.”
His dad is Marko Tervonen, a cofounder of prolific melodeath-thrashers The Crown. This music is Mateo’s birthright. He grew up going to Crown shows in Sweden and jamming along to his dad’s Metallica live DVDs, dreaming of someday being Kirk Hammett. It didn’t take him long to get the chance: In 2014, at the age of nine, he played in a Metallica covers ensemble with his future Sarcator bandmate, drummer Jesper Rosén. They were encouraged to start that band by a teacher at N3, the city-financed music school and culture center they both attended in their native Trollhättan. Unknowingly, that teacher was helping to lay the groundwork for the New Wave of Swedish Thrash.
“You get pushed onstage if you show an interest for it, whether you like it or not. It is very much like that in Sweden,” Mateo says. “Sweden is pushing culture and stuff like that, music, art, everything.”
The official beginning of Sarcator came a few years later, in 2018, when they rounded out their lineup, rented a rehearsal space, and started writing their own material. Mateo was 13 at the time. His and Rosén’s N3 experience meant they weren’t totally green when they entered the studio to track their self-titled debut in 2020, but there was still a bit of a learning curve to conquer. Helpfully, Marko Tervonen agreed to record, mix, and master the album.
“That was when it became for real,” Mateo says. “And of course, it was good to have someone like my dad who has studio experience, because we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. We just wanted to play the songs!”
Sarcator is an impressive debut in the lineage of the band’s biggest influences, including Sarcófago and Kreator, whose names form the portmanteau they took for their own moniker. They eclipsed it by far on Alkahest, a sophomore level-up that’s as least as impressive as Pleasure to Kill—or, hell, Ride the Lightning.
“That was, for all of us, the most important creative phase in our lives,” Mateo says. “It’s a very important record for us as musicians to reflect on, because as dramatic as the change sounds, it was [as dramatic] in the rehearsal room for us, making the songs. It was a very fun experience that I think we’ll never have again. The first record is very narrow in a sense. It is a thrash album, [with] sort of the same formula on all of the songs. But that’s classic debut album stuff.”
“But then, something happened,” he continues. “We accepted every influence that we came up with. Now, I have this psychedelic rock riff. Whatever. Throw it in! Now a death metal riff. Throw it in! It’s like, no rules. Some songs felt illegal, and that was a great feeling. Like, “we can’t do this shit!” You know?”
The liberated Sarcator that appears on Alkahest made what’s likely the most accomplished thrash album the Swedish New Wave has seen thus far. Its labyrinthine songs caught the attention of more than just Swedish teenagers. In July, international powerhouse Century Media announced they were signing Sarcator. Their third album, and first for the label, will be out in early 2025.
Eternal Evil
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP, Cassette
Eternal Evil formed in Stockholm in 2019, just a few months after Sarcator began operations 400 kilometers to the west. Their musical lives have been intwined ever since. They became online friends first, sending early versions of songs back and forth between Trollhättan and Stockholm. Both bands would release their debut albums on the Cleveland label Redefining Darkness, and both would move to European indies for the follow-ups. Both started when they were extremely young, and both significantly stepped up their games on their second albums. Most importantly, they’ve played shows together throughout Sweden, and those gigs have been critical incubators for the scene.
“Sarcator and Eternal Evil have been supporting each other since day one, I would say,” Adrian Tobar says. “What I love about playing with Sarcator, and I’m not trying to be egotistical or above everyone, but Sarcator and Eternal Evil are the two bands that are almost, like, the most musically gifted bands in Sweden right now. So playing with Sarcator, it’s like a battle of the bands. ‘Shit, they’re doing this? We’ve got to top that!’ It’s a positive competition with each other.”
Before Eternal Evil, Tobar played in another ultra-young band called Three Dead Fingers. (“We played the Sweden Rock Festival when I was 14 years old, and I was scared as shit,” he laughs.) He brought that experience into Eternal Evil, who made their auspicious debut with 2021’s incredibly titled The Warriors Awakening … Brings the Unholy Slaughter! That album wears its early Slayer and Kreator influence on its sleeve, almost to a fault. A new lineup joins Tobar and co-guitarist Tobias “Ozzy” Lindström on its follow-up, The Gates Beyond Mortality, and you can hear the Eternal Evil sound begin to open up.
“That new lineup was so fresh and new, and we all wanted to evolve ourselves as musicians, which didn’t happen with the first lineup,” Tobar says. “They wanted to stick to a certain formula. I can understand if you want to do that, but me, as a musician, I don’t want to do it. I want to explore. I need something new all the time.”
The Gates Beyond Mortality is still rooted in evil, blackened thrash, but it’s clear the band has grown more comfortable with mid-paced riffage, more complex song structures, and, most notably, melody.
“Ever since I picked up a guitar, I am a melody freak,” Tobar confirms. “I love to put that stuff on faster, aggressive music. I’ve always listened to mostly melodic stuff. I love thrash metal and would fucking die for it, but musically, I’m more into melodic-based bands.”
Stockholm is Sweden’s largest city and capital, so Eternal Evil likely have the most boots-on-the-ground influence in the current thrash scene. Arguably, it was their shows that first proved there was a truly new wave cresting in Sweden, distinct from the previous generation of thrashers.
“We built our own crowd, so to speak,” Tobar says. “If you look at those early pictures of shows from 2019 and shows from 2021, there’s not a single guy over 20 years old in the crowd. Then, when word started to spread more and more, the scene from back then started listening to us and going to our shows.”
“Of course we have loyalty, and will forever spread the name of those older bands,” he adds. “But you’ve got to accept the truth. There’s gonna be a time those bands will not play anymore. It’s up to us young people to keep the fire burning.”
Atonement
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Arriving a little later than Sarcator and Eternal Evil but rising just as fast is Atonement, a trio of 18-year-olds from Stockholm who play a raw, violent form of thrash. It seems the atavistic Scandinavian spirit that animated Merciless in the ’80s and Nifelheim in the ’90s has found a worthy new vessel.
“[We wanted] to have a primitive, old-school sound, and I think we have made it pretty much as we wanted it to be,” says vocalist and guitarist Ludvig Rösth.
“Everybody wanted to be as evil as possible, and at that time, we think there was a lot of great bands and demos that got out during those years: ’86, ’87, ’88,” adds drummer Mille Lundström. “We want to recreate those kinds of albums”
Along with bassist Niklas Saari, a former member of Eternal Evil, Rösth and Lundström have committed to their old-school metal worship with monastic devotion. Sadistic Invaders, Atonement’s 2023 debut, is a heartfelt tribute to the earliest era of extreme metal, when thrash, black metal, and death metal weren’t yet distinct subgenres, and when speed reigned supreme. To help bring their style to life, they called on a Swedish metal icon: Sunlight Studio’s Tomas Skogsberg, whose production for bands like Entombed and Dismember gave Swedish death metal its signature “buzzsaw” sound.
“I remember I sent him a message checking if he was interested in doing our album,” Saari says. “And then I asked him, ‘Would you be able to do a Merciless The Awakening sort of thing?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, of course I can do this.’ Because most people that record there want to do the Dismember and Entombed sound.”
Atonement stayed at Skogsberg’s cabin in the woods for the duration of the recording for Sadistic Invaders, and the ambiance seemed to rub off on the sessions. “It’s like a museum,” Rösth says, citing the Hall of Fame-like timeline of Sunlight productions that Skogsberg has up on the walls. The whole band acknowledged the feeling that recording there tied them into a grand Swedish metal tradition.
Because of their defiantly old-school sound, Atonement shows tend to draw a slightly older crowd than Sarcator and Eternal Evil. The teenage thrashers still come out, the band are quick to note, but they’ve had no trouble connecting across generations.
“A lot of people come to our shows for nostalgia, because they lived throughout the ’90s, and lived throughout the old Swedish death metal scene, and they come out to our show and feel a bit nostalgic,” Lundström says.
“They were all there in the beginning, and then it was dead for some years,” Saari says. “And now, it’s somehow back.”
Digging Deeper: Debuts and Demos
Hostilia
Founded by teen brothers Albert and Wille Lindeblad in 2021, Gothenburg’s Hostilia sound a touch more American than most of their fellow Swedes in the thrash scene. There’s a streetwise verve to Atomic Thunder, the band’s self-released EP from 2023. It feels more like getting curb-stomped by Paul Baloff than it does conjuring evil in the forest with Tomas Skogsberg. The Lindeblad brothers’ playing – Albert on drums, Wille on guitar – makes it clear that they’ve got room to grow. “Fuck, they’re so musically gifted it’s fucking crazy,” Eternal Evil’s Adrian Tobar says with genuine admiration. “You should check them out, really.”
Venthiax
DIY is embedded in the DNA of Jönköping’s Venthiax. Bassist Wendy Juneström also publishes Black Pages, a Swedish-language fanzine documenting the metal scene in Scandinavia and beyond. Across nine issues, she’s interviewed just about every other band mentioned in this piece. That passion for underground metal comes through loud and clear on Venthiax’s self-titled EP from 2023, a wicked little piece of blasting, blackened thrash that nods to mid-period Swedish thrash bands like Nifelheim and Antichrist.
Mutation
Atonement bassist Niklas Saari sings for Mutation, a Stockholm death/thrash band that also includes members of Antichrist and Beastiality. When their lone demo drops to a mid-paced stomp, it lands more on the death metal side of the line. But when they decide to pick up speed, it’s evil, thrashing madness, pure and true. “I’m very specific when it comes to death metal and stuff,” says Sarcator’s Mateo Tervonen. “I usually like stuff that is a bit outside of the metal cliches, and that’s one of those bands. It sounds like Repugnant, [or] Invidious from Uppsala. It’s this fucking raw death/thrash stuff that just is right down my alley.”
Menecia
Compact Disc (CD)
Hailing from the small northern town of Sandviken, black/thrash specialists Menecia are perhaps the most geographically isolated band in the current Swedish scene. But with just a pair of demos under their belts, this trio of 16-year-olds is managing to make waves down in Stockholm. (Eternal Evil’s Tobar lists them as one of his favorite new Swedish bands.) The demos are rough around the edges and almost confrontationally raw in fidelity, but Menecia are already writing great songs. Evil Command, from this May, will reward those who can get on its wavelength with a strange, almost Sabbat-like atmosphere.
Eradikated
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP
While undeniably a more commercial-sounding proposition than their underground-worshiping peers, Skåne County’s Eradikated belong in any roundup of modern Swedish thrash. Their debut album, Descendants, would have fit neatly into a previous thrash revival—the U.S. boom of the 2000s, spearheaded by bands like Municipal Waste and Fueled by Fire. This fall, Eradikated will headline a Swedish tour featuring Sarcator, Eternal Evil, and new upstarts Bloodstain.
Maniak
“They disbanded like a month ago,” shares Niklas Saari. “They don’t really exist anymore.” Alas, so it goes with youth movements and metal scenes. On their Deathleicher demo and a subsequent EP, Falun’s Maniak played an especially punkish take on the Swedish black/thrash—think Midnight, not Merciless, with a healthy injection of Sarcófago and early Sepultura. You can now find their former members split between Retribution and Diabolica, both of whom are straight-up black metal bands. Maybe that will be the next genre to get a Swedish New Wave.
