Ride Or Die’ is the first single release in nearly two years by Swedish post-punk/goth icons Then Comes Silence. It is also an opening statement of intent from their stunning new album, ‘Trickery’, which is out on 5th April, with vocalist Alex Svenson stating: “Friendship is love. It is important and worth fighting for. It’s ride or die.”
Indeed, much of ‘Trickery’ celebrates friendship, unity and the feeling of belonging to a tribe, with TCS explaining that “being a part of the post-punk and goth scene is a great privilege. After being on the road for so many years, we have experienced caring and welcoming audiences, both old and young, some with a similar background and some just for the love of the music and the culture that comes with the lifestyle. Uniting and harmonising with other people, we feel an incredible community together and it is a feeling that is both priceless and a blessing.”
‘Trickery’ is also the audio definition of triumph over adversity. Backtracking to 2022, on the eve of their first-ever US tour and eager to promote their just released ‘Hunger’ album and its 2020 predecessor ’Machine’, TCS were suddenly and unexpectedly reduced to a three-piece. Would their famed darkwave wall-of-sound still work in a trio format? Fortunately, the answer was resoundingly positive, so much so that they resolved to continue with this slimmed-down line-up on a permanent basis, a period that has already included further US and European tours, followed by their return to the studio to make ‘Trickery’.
The inadvertent metamorphosis of the band has also led to a different way of creating new music. In order to capture the heart and essence of the trio’s live prowess, ‘Trickery’ was recorded in just three days in Kapsylen Studio in Stockholm. With Jonas Fransson (a band member since 2015) laying down an energetic punk backbeat and sleaze punk fan Hugo Zombie (a 2018 recruit) providing inventive and rhythmic guitar lines, the main focus remains on singer and bassist Svenson, the sole surviving founder member from the band’s 2012 debut album. His velvety croon and solid bass lines are enhanced on ‘Trickery’ by retro synth sounds reminiscent of his recent solo futurist wave project, Neonpocalypse. “The electronic elements are essential to ‘Trickery’,” he adds, “but are also a salute to punk music, the cradle of Then Comes Silence and the cradle of post-punk.”
Founded by Svenson in 2012 and touring frequently to promote three albums released in quick succession, TCS soon found a large audience in Germany. Signing to Nuclear Blast in 2016 for the release of ‘Blood’, their fanbase widened as they shared stages with artists such as A Place To Bury Strangers, Chameleons and Fields Of The Nephilim and performed at festivals all over mainland Europe. Firmly in the vanguard of the new generation of post-punk, darkwave and goth artists releasing high quality new material, they work hard to promote it and are recognised as a leading live act in their genre. They have also built a significant UK following and 2024 has already seen them play a sold out London show at the 229 venue.
TCS recently signed to Metropolis Records for the worldwide release of ‘Trickery’
Iconic US-based label Metropolis Records is excited to announce the signing of beguiling Swedish post-punk outfit Then Comes Silence for the release of their seventh album, titled ‘Trickery’. This record celebrates friendship, unity and belonging to a group – your tribe. The first single – ‘Ride or Die’, which has already emerged in Germany’s authoritative DAC Charts, will be released on March 1.
“Metropolis Records is thrilled to announce the return of Then Comes Silence. The new album “Trickery” will be the band’s first worldwide release with us. It’s a fantastic album and we are excited to get to share it with you. It’s a refinement of the band’s signature sound, a focused distillation of everything TCS has released to date. Metropolis will be releasing the first single from the record, ‘Ride or Die’ on March 1st,” says Jim Smith of Metropolis Records.
Hailing from Stockholm, Then Comes Silence was founded by Alex Svenson in 2012, originally inspired by frequent touring with A Place To Bury Strangers and an attraction to horror and the occult. Today he is joined by drummer Jonas Fransson and Hugo Zombie (Los Carniceros del Norte) on guitar.
“For this forthcoming album ‘Trickery’, we had a change of deal and went full member of the Metropolis Records family. We are ready to embrace the crowd again with our heart and can’t wait to get the album out,” says frontman Alex Svenson.
Recorded by Jörgen Wall (Jay-Jay Johanson, The Hellacopters) over three days at Stockholm’s Kapsylen Studio and mixed by Tom van Heesch (Rammstein, Apocalyptica, Backyard Babies), this album was mastered by Svante Forsbäck / Chartmakers (Rammstein, Amaranthe, Ville Valo, The Rasmus, Apocalyptica).
These sessions capture the heart and essence of rock. With electronic elements being essential to the new recordings, ‘Trickery’ is also a salute to punk music, to which Then Comes Silence traces their roots.
After debuting with their eponymous album in 2012, Then Comes Silence put out two more albums before releasing ‘Blood’ via Nuclear Blast in 2016. Their subsequent ‘Machine’ album was jointly released via Oblivion/SPV and Metropolis Records in 2020.
Then Comes Silence unexpectedly became a three-piece just ahead of their 2022 US tour, then setting out to answer the question “could they continue with only three members”? Proving to work well, the band transformed into a trio, their metamorphosis leading to a different way of creating music and performing live.
Then Comes Silence has toured and played live with The Fields of the Nephilim, The Chameleons, A Place To Bury Strangers and most recently with The Bellwether Syndicate and Vision Video. With many festivals to their name, highlights include M’era Luna, Wave Gotik Treffen, Amphi Festival, Castle Party and W-Festival.
The ‘Ride or Die’ single will be unleashed digitally everywhere on March 1. The full ‘Trickery’ album will be released on vinyl and CD, as well as digitally, on April 5. In March and April, Then Comes Silence will be touring North America extensively with Vision Video.
With a few live shows set for early 2024, we interviewed the band back in the summer and kept it until now closer to the shows to whet your appetite for what’s to come in 2024. Get your pancake 13 corpsepaint on and paint those nails black. As the dry ice wafts under the door ladies and gentlemen the finest modern Goth band currently making records are in the house and the best way to bring the curtain down on 2023. Ladies & Gentlemen we bring you…Then Comes Silence
Can you take us back to the beginning of the band? Where did it start and what was it like playing the kind of music you do, was there a supportive scene back home?
Alex
The band was formed in 2012 and released its debut album the same year, a slightly forgotten record these days. We don’t play any of the songs from that album live. In the beginning, the music was more noise rock-ish with a lot of psych influences. The sound was gritty and more doomy than gloomy. The scene wasn’t big up here. If it hadn’t been for the Germans who started embracing us in 2015 we probably would have broken up the band.
Jonas
I joined the band 2015, after the release of Nyctophilian. The scene in Stockholm is relatively small but supportive for sure. I remember very well when we recorded the music video for Strangers at a live show in Stockholm. Good times!
The band has evolved over the years and had several line-up changes or additions to the band. Did you feel it needed to grow to get the sounds you wanted?
Jonas
The sound is constantly evolving, it would be boring otherwise. The changes in our lineup did not have anything to do with the sound, but It had an impact on it later on. Different people, with different ideas and musical backgrounds. It’s a part of the growing process I guess.
During lockdown, you did a series of eps with some exceptional covers. How did you choose what to record and is there a particular favourite looking back? I love your Lords cover do you think the eps will ever get a vinyl pressing? Did the lockdowns help your writing or was the isolation a hindrance you appeared to adapt really well to working in a new way.
Jonas
Our tour for ‘Machine’ was canceled because of the lockdowns, it was way too early to start working on a new album, and with nothing else to do, we started to make some covers, just for fun. It turned out good so we released them on digital platforms. We basically chose songs we liked, and that we thought would be interesting to make our version of.
Alex
We decided quite early to not let the lockdown stop us. We had a new album out and had to find a way to promote it. The live streams turned out to be our salvation. The EPs go hand in hand with the rest of the situation around the lockdowns and restrictions. The tours were constantly being postponed so we came up with the idea of making a digital project. It was some kind of way to improve the songwriting for the band. A study of other people’s music.
You have a tonne of videos on the Internet. Do you enjoy the process of making music videos? How important to the band are the accompanying videos?
pic by Jonas Fransson
Jonas
It’s a lot of work, but fun indeed. Visuals are very important for spreading the songs.
Hugo
I don’t think making videos is something very enjoyable, but they are very important. For me music is very visual, I need to see how the band looks, and if I don’t like it, probably i’ll never enjoy their music. Also, a music video is like a mini movie that takes you into the band’s world, to me it’s a much more complete experience that just listening to the record. I mean, when you go to a concert, you don’t close your eyes, right?
You’ve been touring pretty solidly since lockdown was lifted. How do audiences differ from say the UK to the USA to Europe? Is the scene stronger in certain countries?
Alex
We’ve experienced an exciting and growing goth scene in the US. I hope it spills over to the EU and the UK.
Jonas
The scene in Europe is very supportive and awesome, but it needs new blood or it will be gone in 20 years. When we toured in USA with Vision Video we got to experience a young and hungry crowd of baby bats. I hope we can have the same in Europe soon.
As far as songwriting goes how is that split between the band? Do you write all the time or just in the lead-up to recording an album?
Alex
I basically make music all the time. I bring my “book of lyrics” everywhere I go and the gear is always set up for recording back home in my writing studio.
Jonas
Alex writes the songs, and we make the finishing arrangements and touches together.
You’ve been going over a decade and have released records solidly over that period. The sound has evolved through each record do you think you have settled on the definitive “Then Comes Silence” sound now?
Jonas
No, as stated in the previous question, that would be boring. TCS will always be and sound like TCS, but it’s fun to try new things and we can’t make the same albums over and over again.
Alex
The sound has to change because we constantly change a bit as people. The places we go to and stay in change a lot too. The music is an expression of the world we live in.
You’ve announced some UK shows for 2024 is it more difficult to come here since Brexit compared to getting into the States or playing mainland Europe?
Hugo
Of course, it’s more difficult to tour in the UK since Brexit. That’s the reason why many bands don’t tour in the UK anymore. It’s not like they don’t want to go, it’s Brexit that doesn’t make it easy. We’re making four shows in the next round, but we would like to make many more. About the States, it has always been difficult and expensive to tour there for us, even more than in the post-brexit UK.
Will there be a new album by the time you hit the UK?
Alex
We’re working on new music as we speak, but it won’t be released until later unfortunately, but who knows… if we’re lucky and finish in time we might have a single for the UK in January.
Where will people get the best of Then Comes Silence live or on record where are you most comfortable? Studio or live.
Jonas
I believe we’re fine in both situations, but we prefer live.
The artwork is very striking on all the albums is the visual side of your art something you enjoy creating?
Alex
I’m quite privileged and know how to work with ink and paper, so we have to use that for the band. It’s complementary to the band’s music. Jonas has a great eye for graphics and design so nothing passes without his approval.
Jonas
Yes, everything is connected. The music, the videos, the artwork. We enjoy creating. Alex is a talented illustrator and I have a background as a graphical designer/artworker, and am also a hobby photographer. Alex is the nonstop working mastermind, full of ideas, and me and Hugo are doing our best to keep up
Somewhere between the B52s and Devo lurks The Meat Sweaters. (hailing from Brighton and London, via Stockholm, Sweden) release their debut EP ‘Paranoid and Sweaty’ on July 22nd and have a new track from it available today called ‘Body Yoghurt’.
The Meat Sweaters are a trio (Wahoo Samuels, Pete Fraser and Jon Palmer) of friends who appreciate sounds that are very far removed from what most would consider conventional. Embarking on a thrillingly bizarre synth-punk journey with their debut four-track EP, ‘Paranoid and Sweaty’, released July 22nd via Hype Music (a sub label of Extreme Music), today sees the release of disturbing new single ‘Body Yoghurt’. A manic, twitching, rampant, glorious mess of deranged experimental punk, ‘Body Yoghurt’ never takes its foot off the accelerator pedal.
But what’s it all about?
“What does yoghurt taste like? How do you know the flavours? Which do you like? Which are best to apply to your body? Let us tell you about the best and worst ways to Body Yoghurt,” states Wahoo Samuels.
None the wiser? Good. The Meat Sweaters aim to confuse.
lenceIn direct contrast we also have one from the new Then Comes Silence album ‘Hunger’ it’s like night and day (see what I did there?) kings of the dark Goth are back with a new album ‘Hunger’
When we were running Uber Rock at its peak, we used to get literally hundreds of new albums to download and review a week. So, how did we pick out what fitted best with our readership and most of all our dedicated team of writers, who let’s remember were effectively working for free? Well I found the best way to weed out the real crackers was via a technique I used to call “lucky track number seven”. It was something I’d used for years when test driving albums, ever since CDs were invented in fact, in so much that the first track of any new album I would play would be track seven. My twisted logic being that in the age of thirteen/fourteen track albums if a record could blow you away half way through then…it must be a great record.
So why am I telling you this? Well it’s through this technique I first discovered Swedish goth outfit Then Comes Silence. It was back in early 2016 that I first heard their third independently released album, ‘Nyctophilian’, (well it was track seven ‘Animals’ actually) and it immediately impressed the hell out of me sounding not unlike Sisters of Mercy might sound if; 1) they had a drummer, and 2) they actually still put out records.
Fast forward to 2017 and the band were snapped up by Nuclear Blast for the release of their awesome ‘Blood’ album and I for one thought that with the surge in popularity at the time of bands like Ghost that the arena stages of the world were just a hit single away for the band, and let’s face it that album had about six or seven tunes that could have been HUGE hits given the right exposure and a little bit of help from Lady Luck.
Which kind of brings us bang up to date, albeit for the fact that ‘Monster’ the band’s first for the Oblivion/SPV, Metropolis Records alliance still sees the band without that illusive mainstream breakthrough.
I’ll admit for this one I didn’t start with track seven, and in many ways, I actually wish I had, because it did initially take me a few spins to get under the skin of ‘Machine’, yet rather spookily it was ‘W.O.O.O.U.’ (the lucky seventh track on the album) that finally got me pressing the repeat button, and now I just can’t stop playing this gloriously dark thirteen tracker.
The pop hooks of ‘Blood’ are still present it’s just they take a little longer to become earworms, with the likes of ‘Dark End’ and the simply magnificent ‘Ritual’ (featuring True Moon’s Karolina Engdahl on guest vocals) initially half-masking their infectious charms in the shadows before finally getting around to sinking their teeth into your neck come chorus time. There’s an almost Mission goes industrial feel to ‘I Gave You Everything’ something Wayne and Co have tried to do on so many occasions and, in my opinion, have never quite pulled off, but here Then Come Silence do it with ease. ‘Apocalypse Flare’ likewise is possibly the best Mission song The Mission have never actually written.
In many ways Then Comes Silence are like Stockholm’s answer to Helsinki’s Grave Pleasures both bands painting a post-apocalyptic soundscape that melds together elements of goth and electronica for the next generation of khol-eyed musical vampires to fall in love with, and in the outstanding ‘Glass’ they could very well have their very own ‘Love Like Blood’.
‘Machine’ is the almost near perfect soundtrack for 2020 – please don’t let it pass you by, because it’s a simply stunning record that truly ‘Cuts Inside’.
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