BACKENGRILLEN Drop Ferocious Self-Titled Debut, Blending Hardcore, Punk & Free-Form Death Jazz

The new Umeå-based ensemble Backengrillen have officially arrived with their self-titled debut album, out today January 23, 2026 on vinyl, CD and digitally via Bandcamp, released through Svart Records.

Rooted in hardcore, punk, noise and free jazz, Backengrillen are less a band than a collision. Their lineup draws from the original incarnation of Refused, alongside deep ties to projects such as Fire Orchestra, The International Noise Conspiracy, INVSN, TEXT, Final Exit, The Thing and classic jazz outfits — with one member even tracing their origins back to the 1980 jazz-rock ensemble Nirvana.

As saxophonist and experimental icon Mats Gustafsson puts it, the band's ethos is about tearing down borders entirely: "Music and art without definite labels is a necessity for a better living — create your own individual genres and open up for more death-jazz-core-noise-metal-poetry to enter your world of destroying the local and global stupidities around us."

That sense of joyful destruction runs straight through the record. Drummer David Sandström sums it up with typical bluntness: "We really hope this slab of stupid, violent death rock will ruin someone's day. Haha."

Backengrillen describe themselves as anti-fascist, anti-racist, free-form death jazz, operating in the memory of Lars Lystedt while carving out new perspectives on both jazz and punk. The result is a confrontational, in-your-face hybrid — hardcore jazz that's as physical as it is chaotic.

Sonically, the band pull inspiration from an intentionally unruly spectrum: The Cramps, Little Richard, Albert Ayler, Polly Bradfield, Entombed, John Zorn, Misfits, The Stooges, Lars Gullin and Can all loom somewhere in the wreckage. It's music that swings, screams and convulses — four “colliding locomotives,” as the band describe it, generating a new kind of brutal beauty.