After about two years of silence, Stockholm screamo act BARABBAS, DU FÖRTAPPADE are back with new split record with synth infused emoviolence act Кальк (KALK), and today we’re stoked to give you its early listen and additional commentary from the band, taking on their new chapter, this particular split recording, and their local screamo scene. Both bands sat down with us for the full track by track rundown, so be sure to digest the full pill of insights below!
Barabbas, du förtappade started about 3-4 years ago. Since then we’ve played music that would not go well as an example of melodic harmony. We released an EP titled Discourse on Emocat Records and Winter Sea Label in 2017. We made a longer European tour with Kid, Feral in 2018 and have since then been somewhat in a limbo but are ready to get back to doing band stuff again. Our goal for 2020 is writing more new material and finally recording an LP.
For all of us Barabbas, du förtappade has been the first and main band but recently we have welcomed a new guitarist Francisco that previously played in Novembervägen and is also in Empress X. Our friend and ex-guitarist Theo decided to leave the band in 2019. He went on a long journey and later moved to a different city to study music and might not come back to Stockholm after that, and thus decided that it was best to leave this band. We are still close friends and while we were sad to see Theo go from the band, we always understood his decision. Marta and Seva has also started a powerviolence project Communal Violence last year and are about to release an album soon.
To release a split has been our idea for a long time. These three songs are quite old and were already played on our tour in 2018. When Theo, our previous guitarist, decided to quit the band we made an effort to record the songs so that they wouldn’t get lost. Our friend André (from Nya städer, Baby, Careless & Tomorrow, St Peter) helped us record the songs in his rehearsal sapce in December 2018 before Theo went away. We wanted to release them quite fast after recording but I guess we weren’t really actively pushing it forward. We also had some troubles with the band we were supposed to release the split with at first. Finally we decided to get it going and talked with Кальк. That was a perfect shot, Кальк was really happy to release some songs with us. We are happy about this collaboration since we really like their music and have had our eyes on them for a while.
Stockholm screamo
The screamo scene in Stockholm is probably thought to be much bigger than it actually is. It is thriving and there are many great bands although the members mostly have been already active in the scene for the past few years and the new bands are basically blends of the others. That just fluctuates, there is a number of awesome active bands that deserve attention. The See You Next Summer fest that recently took place in Copenhagen is the best evidence for that. However, at the same time it is clear that the screamo scene is not as populous as it once was. Despite the good vibes and friends not as many people come to the shows of this type as before.
КАЛьК – TRACK BY TRACK commentary
01 ∄
Contains samples by various Russian news outlets on the case of “The Web”.
02 Паразит
In April 2015 Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko signed Decree No.3, a law obliging unemployed individuals to pay taxes as “social parasites”. His understanding was that such a law could unify the people against “parasites” living on minimal welfare and thereby unofficially help the declining economy of the country.
Ultimately and fortunately this sparked a chorus of outrage in the civil population. After thousands protested it the decree was suspended in March 2017 and abolished in January 2018.
The ideas behind this law remain not only in the heads of Belorussian officials, but in a lot of regressive western politicians though.
We wont’t have it. We will fight such repression tooth & nail.
03 Нурсултан
In March 2019 Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh autocrat and leader of the country for almost three decades, stepped down after a series of surprisingly persistent protests, “to give way to a new generation” of rulers. While giving away his post as president he got a new job as “Chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan” which is just a fancy title and means: He’s still the de-facto leader. Vladimir Putin is trying to pull a similar maneuver in the near future. Just wait for it.
We wrote the song to comment on the idiocy to support narcissistic, megalomaniacal strongmen. Kazakhstan renamed the capital after their “former” leader… nuts. Just.. nuts.
04 ∃
Contains samples by various Russian news outlets on the case of “The Web”.
BARABBAS, DU FÖRTAPPADE – TRACK BY TRACK commentary
05 Få det gjort
Lyrics: Goal after goal, performance followed by performance. Life is short but there is no end. Fuck this. Let’s just get it done.
This one is by far the oldest song of the three on this split. It was written just after we recorded our previous effort. It is a short song with equally short lyrics. The lyrics came out of talking about how our life is so often defined by goals and your performances. Even things outside of your job or education, things that you enjoy, still relate to accomplishing something instead of just liking what you do.
06 Not Only Will This Kill You but It Will Hurt The Whole Time You’re Dying
Lyrics: Put lives to death and live while dying. Put sex on fire. Happiness for the sake of happening. Burn the lust, fuck agreements, fuck arguments.
Everything is withering because I have to live. If I had to die the death strife would be great. I don’t want to choose a path, life will choose a path for me. Then, I don’t want to live. Life is not worth dying for.Sometimes when I (Seva) write lyrics to songs I can do it very fragmented by writing something done one day, finishing it later and that can change the songs’ meaning. It can even develop into me totally forgetting what the original idea behind the song was. And here it is exactly the case. When I was compiling the details for the split I had to write down and send the lyrics and then I realized that the original idea was totally gone from my head. But it is also the beauty of art and music – it doesn’t have to be static.
In this very moment I think about the lyrics as describing the way we people have entered a hyper-subjective and narcissistic society where we look at what happens in our lives as either results of our own choices and actions or, if we’re not happy with it, as a disappointment because it is not what we have expected.
We also did a “music video” for this song based on footage from our 2018 tour with Kid, Feral.
07 I am Schopenhauer
Lyrics: White are the world’s brightest spots meaning meaningless and bland in comparison to other parts. Everything is trading colours full of blood to those with more black instead. Put the canvas on fire quench it down. Either you’ve burned yourself too or it doesn’t really matter. But the real art is forever. Blood and black won’t burn. Someone needs to hold on to the truth. Is there any meaning of being good?
To continue the sceptisism of our daily lives, this nod to an Orchid classic (although only by the title) has lyrics that are about the fact that we always tend to forget what’s good and what our fights have accomplished. In a lot of alternative, “woke” and leftist circles, decadence is a way of dealing with the shit that we see in the world. By embracing a way too ambitious goal or by being so “woke” that everything else is pure shit by that standard, people retreat to being decadent and hating this world instead of trying to move positions. That sucks and you end up being as crap as the things you hate.
Some other 2020 records worth a check:
Envy – The Fallen Crimson
Sega Bodega – Salvador
Soho Rezanejad – Honesty Without Compassion Is Brutality (part 1 came out in 2019 but whatever)
Decacy – Non Cambierà (very cool new Italian screamo, sounds like the best classics)
And also look out for a new full length record from Кальк in a month or so! It’s going to very good, guaranteed.
