Stream Vi som älskade…’s Full, Stunning New Album Exclusively Here

Sweden’s Vi som älskade varandra så mycket are back with another full-length album, and it’s a stunner. Called Det Onda. Det Goda. Det Vackra. Det Fula. and available via both Europe’s Moment of Collapse Records and North America’s Zegema Beach Records, the release packs the powerful, sky-scraping post-rock/screamo hybrid that the group is renowned for. Listen for the first time to the full record exclusively below ahead of its release on November 22.

The group’s songs are mostly around five minutes, meaning they’re longer than a significant portion of straightforward screamo, and Vi som älskade… fill out that runtime with flowing song structures that contain plenty of stirring, steady builds. Repeatedly, they gradually increase the intensity of the music until they’re performing a gloriously torrential, sonically huge, intense creation that simultaneously includes both the devastating torrents of the harshest screamo and the relentlessly forward movement of the most ambitious post-rock.

It’s a triumph of emotionally intimate songwriting. The band have magnified the close-to-home intensity of some of the best screamo a whole new direction by keeping those onslaughts going and going.

Although essentially the entirety of the vocals are delivered in a dynamic, and thereby especially emotionally earnest, scream, Vi som älskade… do vary their music’s intensity significantly at times. For example, their track “Men Livet Går Vidare” begins and ends on rather thin music concentrated on the strumming of an apparent single guitar, and that sonic contemplation pops up at other points too. Meanwhile, the album’s fifth track, called “Kontakt,” speeds the music up a bit to a galloping pace, which functions to add even more energy to the overall outpouring.

Ultimately, as exemplified in the finale’s repeated, intense builds, Vi som älskade… stick to emotional power. You don’t really have to know a single word of Swedish to feel the impact.

Photo via Johan Angantyr

Check it out below. Pre-order from Moment of Collapse at this link and Zegema Beach at this link if you’re in the U.S. and this link outside of it.