My memories of Bergen always bring a smile to my face. I love that city, and Norway in general, so a bunch of guys playing punk rock’n’roll out of the fjords sounds like a whole lot of fun. And that’s pretty much where Dead Target come in.
These guys hail from nearby Hardanger, play a mix of melodic punk and proper Scandinavian rock’n’roll, and have spent the past few years getting their band back on its feet. Their debut album, “Still While It Spins“, finally arrives on October 23, and there’s a pretty cool local story behind it.
It’s been a long road, too. The band first got together in 2017, went through a couple of names, called it quits for a while, tried coming back, and eventually got things properly rolling again in 2024. Along the way, there were old friendships, village-hall gigs, a small but busy local rock community and plenty of Turbonegro in the mix.
For vocalist and guitarist Sevve Stokholm, whose full name is Severin Stokholm Flatรธy Flotve, Hardanger is still very much home, even though the band are gradually shifting their operations to Bergen.
They even have their own little description for what they do: “Hardanger PunkRockโnโRoll.”
And there’s a good reason they’ve stuck with it.
Sevve and bassist Jack Feng have known each other since childhood and started playing in bands together when they were about 14 or 15. Back then, Hardanger had a surprisingly busy rock scene, with musicians from neighbouring villages sharing rehearsal spaces, getting together at gigs and generally making things happen wherever they could.
One place in particular was Kvam Musikkliv, a shared rehearsal space and music community that is still running today. For two teenage kids keen to get into rock music, it was a pretty good place to spend a Friday night.
“When Jack and I were 14 or 15, we would just show up while the older guys were rehearsing and partying on Friday nights. That was where we first met Kevin and our former guitarist.”
Those older musicians were five to seven years ahead of them and played in a local band called Jordfresar. One was future Dead Target drummer Kevin Fuzz. They became the younger pair’s early local heroes.
“We really looked up to them, watched them play and tried to absorb whatever we could.”
Sometimes Sevve and Jack couldn’t even get into the venues where their favourite local bands were playing. They would stand outside the pubs and listen from there, eventually getting to know the older musicians well enough to become friends.
Sevve laughs about how annoying they probably were as teenagers constantly hanging around.
There was also an annual party at a village hall that brought together bands from across the area. Younger and older musicians would turn up, have some beers and spend the evening playing live. Sevve was 18 and between bands when he met Thomas, who was then drumming for a group called GetYou and would become the first drummer in the new project.
The band initially went by High On The Crime, a name borrowed from a Turbonegro song, before switching to Crime Time. The name Dead Target wouldn’t arrive until January 2024.
At the time, they were just a bunch of young musicians wanting to play more shows and maybe make it out to bigger cities around Norway.
“We dreamed of growing the band and playing in cities across Norway, but we probably did not know enough about how to actually make that happen.”
Living in Hardanger meant having relatively few venues, bands and opportunities nearby. They learned to organise things themselves, and the local DIY attitude stuck with them.
Things slowed down around 2019. Sevve moved to Oslo at the beginning of that year, some members went off to study, and others got busy with the everyday stuff that tends to take over when you’re starting adult life. The original band had five members, including a keyboard player, and by that point it wasn’t really going anywhere.
They had another go at it in 2021 or 2022, but that attempt fizzled out as well.
“Then, in 2024, I decided to give it one final chance.”
This time they came back as a four-piece, with a clearer idea of the music they wanted to make. The old friendships and general attitude were still there, but the guys had settled on a combination of melodic punk and the kind of hard-driving rock’n’roll associated with Norway’s Scandirock tradition.
In January 2024, they headed into the studio with local producer Bjรธrnar Sangolt and recorded two songs, “Signs” and “Leaving in a Year or Two”.
Both came out in May through Norwegian punk-rock label Fucking North Pole Records.
The “PUNX” EP followed later that year, and Dead Target finally played their first show in five years. They also started working with Bjarte Malum, better known as Punkebjarte, through Punkebjartes Punkeplater. By August 2026, the band were discussing a move towards Relentless Booking, having already started building a wider network of gigs and contacts around Norway.
“The 2024 version of Dead Target was the band finally becoming what we had always wanted it to be,” Sevve says.
Their music sits comfortably in the company of the bands that got them into this stuff in the first place. There’s the melodic punk-rock side associated with Green Day and Social Distortion, alongside the bigger guitars and rock’n’roll drive of Turbonegro, The Hellacopters and Gluecifer.
“Still While It Spins” has ten songs squeezed into 24 minutes and 16 seconds, with big choruses, a melodic punk approach and the kind of guitar sound Sevve was chasing from his favourite Scandinavian rock records. The album also has a fair amount going on lyrically, with personal relationships, anxiety, politics and the odd bit of satire among the subjects.
One of the most personal songs is “1998”.
It’s a straightforward reference to the year Sevve was born. November 1998, to be precise, which he jokingly calls the worst month of the year.
The song goes back to his childhood, when CDs, DVDs, landline telephones and limited internet access were still normal parts of everyday life. By his teenage years, smartphones and social media were changing how everyone listened to music, kept in touch and spent their free time.
“We grew up right in the middle of a major transition. I am old enough to remember a childhood before smartphones and social media completely took over, but young enough that the internet still shaped most of my teenage years.”
There’s plenty of nostalgia in that, although some of the memories are difficult. Sevve has dealt with anxiety and depression since childhood, and both are part of the song. He also writes about becoming increasingly disappointed with institutions and people he’d grown up believing were trustworthy.
One of the lines reads, “Raised on manufactured lies, born where every honest hero dies”.
“I am not a conspiracy theorist, but growing older often means realising that the world, its institutions and the people presented to us as heroes are not always as honest as we were led to believe.”
He knows the song is coming from his own life, particularly his relationships with people close to him, although he suspects others born around the same time will recognise some of those feelings.
“1998” was co-written with Ole Ingebrigt Vik, who also shares a writing credit on “Workin’ Overtime”. All the other songs and lyrics on the album were written by Sevve.
“Workin’ Overtime” has a fairly different story behind it. The music was already finished, but the lyrics were giving him trouble. He’d written several versions and wasn’t happy with any of them.
Then something happened in his personal life. He sat down and wrote the final lyrics in about half an hour.
“The song is very close to what I was experiencing at the time, although I would rather not explain every detail or identify the people involved.”
It’s about betrayal, sadness and frustration, particularly what happens when someone throws away something you’ve spent time building together. Sevve wanted to keep the identities and specific circumstances private. Writing the song gave him a way to work through what he was dealing with.
“Here Comes Trouble” features guest vocals from Paul Erik Vercouteren, while “Firebrand” includes a musical reference to Turbonegro’s “I Got Erection”, with Thomas Seltzer and Rune Grรธnn credited as rights holders under the relevant agreement.
The whole album was recorded with Bjรธrnar Sangolt at GUFF Lydstudio in รystese, back in Hardanger. Bjรธrnar had already worked with Dead Target on earlier recordings, so the guys knew each other well by then.
They booked four sessions between November 2025 and April 2026.
The recording process was pretty straightforward. Kevin played the drums while Sevve recorded a temporary guide guitar from the control room. Once the drum takes were finished, that guitar was removed. Jack then recorded the bass, followed by Sevve’s guitars and overdubs, lead vocals and finally the backing vocals.
The entire album was recorded by three musicians. Sevve handled the vocals, all guitars and keyboards, Jack “TheFuck” Feng played bass and sang backing vocals, and Kevin Fuzz, whose real name is Kjetil Gjรธn, played drums and added backing vocals.
The current line-up also includes guitarist and backing vocalist Vegard “HanValen” Lindtveit, who joined after the record was finished. So although Dead Target are now a four-piece, none of Vegard’s guitar playing appears on “Still While It Spins”.
Bjรธrnar made the sessions easy for everyone, according to Sevve, and the actual recording went smoothly. Mixing was where things became a little more complicated.
The first mixes weren’t quite what they had in mind. The band had a release schedule to follow, and Sevve wanted the guitars to have the size and weight he associated with his favourite Scandirock albums.
He’d been following the work of Anders Nordengen, who had mixed or produced records for The Good the Bad and the Zugly, Oslo Ess and The Dogs. Anders also plays in the pop-punk band Eurotrash. They had mutual friends in Oslo, but Sevve had never dealt with him directly.
So he gave him a call.
They sent over some songs and agreed to try one mix first. The test track was “Workin‘ Overtime“, which turned out to be exactly the one they needed to make the decision.
“We started with a test mix of Workinโ Overtime, and it immediately sounded bigger, fuller and more powerful.”
Anders gave them the large guitar sound Sevve wanted while keeping the melodic punk-rock side intact. The guys were happy enough with the result to hand him the rest of the record. He finished the remaining mixes quickly, squeezing them around other studio commitments.
Mastering was handled by Jรธrgen Trรฆen at Duper Studio in Bergen. Jรธrgen has worked with everyone from established Norwegian acts to much smaller bands, and there wasn’t much discussion needed once Dead Target received the first masters.
Their reaction, as Sevve remembers it, was basically: “Okay, this is exactly right.”
There’s another Hardanger connection in the album that’s impossible to miss, and it might be my favourite part of the whole project: that ridiculously packed cover artwork.
Wyลwietl ten post na Instagramie
It was made by Tord Torpe, an illustrator and cartoonist from รystese. Sevve is a big fan of his work and considers him one of Norway’s best artists working in editorial and political cartoons.
He’s also a vinyl collector who loves spending time looking through sleeve artwork, especially those covers where you can stare at the image for ages and keep spotting new characters or jokes.
For Dead Target’s debut, he wanted something along those lines.
He met Tord to talk through some initial ideas, then went home and put together a couple of A4 pages filled with names, characters, references and random suggestions. Tord could use whatever he liked or throw the whole lot out and follow his own ideas.
Wyลwietl ten post na Instagramie
The finished cover is an enormous, wonderfully messy cartoon full of musicians, politicians, strange creatures and details connected to the band’s songs and hometown.
Donald Trump appears as a clown, with Sevve making his opinion of the politician pretty clear. Elsewhere you’ll find Glenn Danzig, Angus Young, Gene Simmons, Bjarte Malum, better known as Punkebjarte, and Norway’s King Harald.
There’s a local bar from Norheimsund tucked away in the picture too.
One character is staring at his phone while his head explodes, something Sevve associates with the craziness of the TikTok era. The illustration also includes song titles, phrases from the lyrics and a character associated with Norwegian punk-rock band Rismann and the Stakedrivers, friends of Dead Target who have toured with them.
Some of the references are political, others are just silly, and a few are strictly for the guys who made the record.
“There are definitely some inside jokes on there that I will never explain to anyone outside the band, haha.”
The setting itself has an actual location behind it. Tord originally based it on the bay leading into Norheimsund, with Sandvenholmen, a small island in the fjord, providing the spot where the band appear. He then went wild with the surroundings, turning the familiar Hardanger scenery into a dense, almost favela-inspired collection of buildings, figures and all sorts of strange stuff.
Wyลwietl ten post na Instagramie
Tord also left room for people to work out their own meanings in the drawing. Sevve likes that approach, and there’s certainly enough packed into the artwork to keep anyone with a vinyl copy occupied for a while.
The finished illustration carries Tord’s artwork credit, with graphic design and layout handled by deadringerrr.
Dead Target are now gradually moving more of their activity towards Bergen, something that makes practical sense with the current line-up. Sevve and Kevin still live in Hardanger, while Jack and Vegard are based in Bergen, around a 70-minute drive away. Since Vegard joined, rehearsals have been split between the two places.
Living outside Norway’s bigger cities has never really stopped them from travelling to gigs, and Sevve reckons modern social media has made it much easier for a small-town band to reach people elsewhere. He’s also more confident now about organising shows and keeping things going than he was during the band’s first attempt.
There’s a slightly sad side to the local story, though. Hardanger still has Kvam Musikkliv, and the guys remain close to the place where they grew up, but Sevve hasn’t seen many younger rock bands appearing in their hometown communities lately.
“Considering how small the place we come from is, there was a remarkably strong music community when we were growing up.”
It’s one of the reasons Dead Target have decided to stick with their Hardanger PunkRock’n’Roll identity, even with rehearsals and other band business shifting to Bergen.
“That makes us even more determined to carry that identity with us, even as the band’s day-to-day operation moves to Bergen.”
“Still While It Spins” is out October 23, 2026, digitally and on 12-inch vinyl at 45 RPM through Punkebjartes Punkeplater, with distribution handled by DIGER Distro / Tiger. The Pink Lemonade vinyl edition is limited to 250 copies.
“Presage (Single Version)”, “1998” and “Workin’ Overtime” are available ahead of the full album release, and you can find the band, check out their music or pick up the record through Dead Target’s Bandcamp. Jack also handles worldwide merch shipping, so overseas listeners can get in on it. Further updates are available via the band’s official links.
