New Music

Swedish and German screamo unite on the newest split from ÅTERSTOD and MEISZEL

13 mins read
meißel

A short while ago, Henning—known for his work in Suis La Lune and Sore Eyelids—reached out to David and Daniel of Meißel with an idea: put their respective tracks together on a split release. Both acts agreed without hesitation, and the result is a three-song offering from Återstod matched with three cuts from Meißel.

Released via Zegema Beach Records in 2025, this collaboration captures each group’s own take on introspective screamo.

From Meißel’s side, the band arose as a two-piece side project when David and Daniel’s other group, Lypurá, found its bassist frequently unavailable. They got to work on songs “just to see where things would lead,” and soon realized they had enough material for a self-titled EP in 2022.

ÅTERSTOD + MEIßEL - Split (tape)
ÅTERSTOD + MEIßEL – Split (tape)

When Henning proposed a split, Meißel had new songs ready to go—“Verblendung” speaks of frustration in a digitally polished world, “Verlies” lingers on loneliness and the need for trust, and “Intro” ushers in the mood with ominous sounds that the band once used to set the tone for live shows.

In Daniel’s words, “Verblendung is about being frustrated by the life you’re living, especially in an increasingly digital world…that can lead to self-doubt, anger, and a lot of negativity.” David describes “Verlies” (meaning “dungeon”) as an extended reflection on feeling trapped by your own fears and failing to notice a helping hand.

ÅTERSTOD
ÅTERSTOD

Återstod’s trio of songs emerged when Henning began experimenting with different tunings and ideas around 2020. He recorded guitar, drums, and vocals in both Sweden and Belgium, crafting tracks that span melodic buildups and stark, bitter finales.

“Never let go” dives into unfulfilled wishes and the anger of carrying around unmet needs, culminating in a fierce, heavy ending. “And longing since” dabbles in short, immediate songwriting that channels the frustration of chasing what you probably can’t attain.

Meanwhile, “Through dust covered windows” confronts old memories from a changed perspective, as if they belong to a different person. According to Henning, “It’s about looking back and realizing the past might seem almost unfamiliar once you learn more about who you are.”

ÅTERSTOD
ÅTERSTOD

The German contingent behind Meißel rehearses at P8 / Kulturdose Karlsruhe—a big creative hub for music, art, printing, and more.

This setup offers them ample space to refine new material and even handle their own recordings, with plenty of technical and moral support on hand.

Asked about their local scenes, Daniel and David also mention other local bands worth checking out, from DVMP and Marasm to their main outfit Lypurá. Henning describes Belgium (where he lived recently) as tricky to navigate without a car—trains often don’t cooperate for late shows—and he suggests the screamo/punk scene there is relatively scattered. By contrast, Gothenburg (his current base) has a more active and varied network of venues, punk/hardcore events, and plenty of new bands.

Beyond this split, both parties remain busy. Meißel recently appeared on another multi-band European screamo release, Stagnating: A 5-way split, alongside Azzacov, Ikigai, Apousia, and Portreit. They’ve also started writing new tracks and are helping organize “was bleibt fest,” a small screamo festival in Karlsruhe meant to fill the gap left by events like Fluff, Miss The Stars, Cry Me A River, and New Noise Fest.

Henning Runolf
Henning Runolf

As for Återstod, Henning has more songs in the works but no plans to form a live lineup yet—he’s focusing on writing, recording, and contributing to other projects that might surface down the road.

Check out the full interview below for a deeper dive into each track, more insights on local DIY scenes, and what both bands plan to tackle next.

Give us a brief comment about your projects, your story, how you’ve evolved, and how you grew over the past year. It’d also be great to get more background on your history as a band.

Daniel / MEIßEL: MEIßEL basically started as David and my side-project. We both also play in LYPURÁ (see IDIOTEQ feature here), and when it became clear that our bass player was increasingly busy from time to time we started writing songs as a duo.

Initially, we didn’t have any goals or plans, we just wanted to write songs. However, it didn’t take long for us to realize that this worked much better than expected. So every time a full band practice wasn’t possible, we just fooled around, wrote more songs and eventually recorded and released our first EP in 2022.

David / MEIßEL: Daniel described the beginning of Meißel perfectly. We want to write songs and that works very well. After we released our debut, our approach to writing songs became more and more intertwined. We often knew where the other person wanted to go musically. Many parts were also more thoroughly planned and played around with. This kind of songwriting is intensive, sometimes also in terms of time capacities, it’s very goal-oriented on various levels and is fun because it is often quite challenging.

Henning / A​̊​TERSTOD: There isn’t much of an origin story for this band since it’s only me writing a bunch of songs, like I usually do. But I guess what would later evolve into återstod first started around 2020 when I began writing some songs that sounded a bit different from what I’ve been doing in my other bands and projects up until that point.

ÅTERSTOD
ÅTERSTOD

I started recording a lot of songs without any clear plan or vision of what they might end up like. And over the years that followed I slowly worked on them until I felt like at least 3 of the songs were pretty much finished. Then I felt like it was something more fitting for a new band/project.

How did you meet? What’s the story behind how this collaboration came about?

Daniel / MEIßEL: Basically, we got an email from Henning (thank you internet!) who had heard our s/t EP, probably liked it, and just asked whether we’d be open to do a split together, so the whole thing was his idea initially. We didn’t have to think about that twice.

Meißel
Meißel

As I understood it then, he had some songs which he thought could fit our style. We started writing emails around a year ago and began planning a possible release. We hadn’t recorded anything by then – so it was clear that this would take a while.

For us this was something huge of course, as at least I was listening to SUIS LA LUNE and SORE EYELIDS since I was 18 or 20 and I was and am still a massive fan.

David / MEIßEL: Thank you Henning for writing to us, for asking us to take part and for initiating this. Suis La Lune will always have a very special place in my musical heart. Now this bond is even stronger. I would love to chat with you in person sometime and jam or hang out or something like that. :)

ÅTERSTOD + MEIßEL - Split (tape)

Henning / A​̊​TERSTOD: I really liked Meißel since I first heard of them. They’re a great band with an amazing sound and really great songs. Once I had gotten my 3 songs close to finished I contacted Meißel and asked if they maybe wanted to make a split or something together.

I thought it would be a good fit with their sound compared to what my songs sounded like. And I was more than thrilled when they said they were happy to do it and that they were about to start recording not long thereafter. Thank you Daniel and David for giving this a chance and seeing it through! I’d love to meet one day and if not playing together at least hanging out! :)

Give us a brief comment on each track—your inspirations and the lyrical layer.

“INTRO”:

David / MEIßEL: The “ominous” intro, as Dave from Zegema Beach Records called it, haha. I am and have always been a big fan of intros or interludes for a few reasons. First of all, they can be a bond that holds the musical fabric together or makes it grow together. In this particular case, it’s an introduction with the main function of a lot of intros: it tries to hook the listener and help them get emotionally involved in something. I think that can be very important for this kind of screamo.

When composing and playing, this intro for me means that I focus more on the sound and what the sound can evoke in its context.

💡 Find it on IDIOTEQ’s Screamo Sad Instrumentals playlist on Spotify:

We wrote this intro for our first show while we were playing around at rehearsals and we felt that this could be the perfect way to start our set to put people in a melancholic and somewhat harmonious mood. I’m glad we recorded it and put it before the other two songs. I have to say that I really like this intro because it fits almost every other song that could follow it.

“VERBLENDUNG”:

Daniel / MEIßEL: I think musically this is one of the “happiest” songs we’ve written so far. It’s definitely fun to play and has this beautiful, open and liberating part at the end.

Lyrically however, this is about being frustrated and disappointed by the life you’re living, especially in an increasingly digital world where everything seems shiny and new and carefree all the time. But, for many people I feel that this doesn’t represent their everyday reality at all. In my opinion this is a problematic contrast which can lead to self-doubt, anger and a lot of negativity.

Meißel
Meißel

David: “Verblendung” means delusion. For me, this song is very representative of what we try to do with MEIßEL. We try to get to the point musically as quickly as possible and create different emotions in a short space of time. We often try to reach our musical limits as a two-piece and then accept or overcome them. I think we managed to do that with this song, similar to our self-titled debut back then.

“VERLIES”:

Daniel / MEIßEL: “Verlies“ is about the feeling of being left behind and being alone, but at the same time it’s also about the difficulty of letting other people help you and learning to trust other people, especially if you’re in a dark place personally. It’s about not getting sucked down into loneliness but grabbing a helping hand.

David / MEIßEL: “Verlies” means dungeon. I have to say that I think it’s great that both titles start with the same letter in both languages. I kind of like word games like that. This is a song that’s not so typical for us – it’s longer, it has parts that had to be repeated to better express this state of being trapped in one’s own thoughts and fears, both on an instrumental and vocal level. The abrupt ending can be understood as a realization of the lyrics:

„[…]just happened
again and again
reality
never understood
you’re burying yourself
in your dungeon
can’t see the hand
it’s slipping away from you.“

If you need help when you are in your “dungeon”, please try to look out for helping hands around you that might try to reach yours. Don’t let them slip away. Speak about it. In our song, there is an open ending with silence, right?! Never choose silence!

ÅTERSTOD + MEIßEL - Split (tape)

Henning / A​̊​TERSTOD:

“never let go”

This song was made from playing a round with different tunings and only fully came together when I played drums over my guitar ideas. I wanted a big contrast in the song and some melodic parts but also some heavy, gritty parts.

Lyrically this song deals with accepting how some things turn out in life, about wishes and hopes that never got fulfilled or never came true. It’s about the longing and the needs that were never met and how to accept that they will never be met. It’s a pretty long song with an ending that really goes deep into the bitterness and anger of that lingering feeling of something lost that you have to carry with you for the rest of your life.

“and longing since”

This songs is short and pretty straight to the point. I wrote this really quickly and it’s not a very complicated song. I’ve always liked shorter songs that manage to fit several moods, changes and different parts in them, without sounding too chaotic or weird. I hope I managed to get something like that into this song.

The lyrics focus on how you set yourself up for disappointment by hoping for things you know will probably never come true and the frustration over the constant search and longing for the things you can never get.

“through dust covered windows”

This song was the last one I finished for the split. The song was practically done for a long time but I needed to re-record the vocals. I was lucky to be able to record them in the attic of my partner’s brother’s house in Belgium. I hope I didn’t scare any of his neighbors while screaming on the attic.

This song deals with that the more you learn about yourself you start to look at things in your past in a different light and question things that happened, how you viewed them at the time and how you remember them. Some things that come back seem so different from how you used to remember them that the memories almost feel like they belong to someone else or that you were just observing them from the side.

ÅTERSTOD
ÅTERSTOD

Let us learn a bit about your local music scenes. What’s the vibe in your cities? What are the characteristics of the independent communities around you?

Daniel / MEIßEL: We are lucky enough to have our rehearsal space at P8 / Kulturdose Karlsruhe (https://www.p-acht.org/?date=2025-01-17 https://kulturdose.de/ ) which is a pretty big and cool place for all kinds of creative people. It’s also a concert venue and was created to give a lot of people the possibility to pursue their creative interests. It’s not only music, but also art and printing, there’s a café, an open workshop and much more.

We now also have the possibility to record our music there, which we never had before. And honestly this makes the whole process much more relaxed. We are both a bit clumsy when it comes to the technical parts of recording and we also don’t have all the equipment (nor can we use it properly). But since the place is so big und full of people willing to help this was a huge step forward for us.

David / MEIßEL: In addition to the mentioned P8 / Kulturdose it also is a home to many bands. From the local scene I can recommend the following bands:

DVMP

LYPURÁ (where Daniel and I are also playing)

MARASM

IN SCHWERER SEE

Henning / A​̊​TERSTOD: Up until recently I lived in Belgium and there I had a pretty hard time connecting with any music scene or go to any shows at all since I don’t have a car or a drivers license. Trains either stopped going too early or were way to unreliable to make it home from any show to where I lived, sadly. I saw a lot of bookings for metal shows though which seemed pretty cool.

There’s also quite a few really big festivals with great lineups every year in Belgium. But I’m not sure Belgium has a big scene for punk related bands at the moment. I didn’t see a lot of events or shows for emo/screamo related things either. But there are a few people that still put up a show occasionally for that type of music. And there’s also Ieper fest of course, for more mosh-type hardcore mainly I suppose.

ÅTERSTOD
ÅTERSTOD

In Sweden, or at least in Gothenburg, I feel that the music scene is pretty small but very active and vibrant. There’s several venues that book puck/hc/crust/metal shows regularly. And there’s a lot of bands in all kinds of genres that seem to be pretty active and do a lot of stuff. Gothenburg might be known for their metal bands internationally but there’s also a lot of great indie music from Gothenburg. And of course a lot of punk/crust as well. Everything is pretty easy to reach with public transport here, which makes it pretty accessible in that aspect at least.

Any plans for the year? Shows, releases, or anything else you’ve got coming up?

Daniel / MEIßEL: Funnily enough we have released another split shortly before this one. This wasn’t planned at all but somehow both records came out within two weeks (although the songs on the earlier split are more than a year older). You can listen to the whole thing here:

It’s also a take on European screamo with bands from Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. Our friends in AZZACOV asked us to be part of this and honestly we didn’t have to think long about this one. Apart from that you can listen to IKIGAI, APOUSIA and PORTREIT.

We’re writing more songs at the moment and we’re also recording some songs with LYPURÁ so I hope that we’ll be able to release more music in the future.

When it comes to playing live, MEIßEL is not really a live-project. We played some shows last year which worked out surprisingly well as a two-piece, but I think the main focus is on writing songs at the moment.

David / MEIßEL: Me and a friend, we are running a small Screamo festival for the first time this summer. It’s called ‚was bleibt fest’ (what stays fest). We are planning to have 8 bands to come over at P8. So far we are still looking for some bands and are doing everything that is needed to have a nice time and create some positive moments.

The motivation to set up the festival was a kind of sadness about the disappearance of the big instances (for the area reached by us) such as Fluff, Miss The Stars, Cry Me A River and New Noise Fest, but also the idea of setting up something ‘bigger’ for this specific musical context. Daniel will help us which I am really looking forward to – also because we set up shows as ‚durchsägen konzerte‘ in the past.

With MEIßEL, we have already written some songs which we will record if we’re ready for it. Can’t wait to do so :)

Henning / A​̊​TERSTOD: I’ve got a lot more songs that I’m working on, so there might come some new music at a later point this year or maybe the next, fingers crossed! As this is a one-person band so far I don’t have any shows planned. So I’m focusing on writing and recording songs for now.

I’m also keeping busy with writing and recording for other projects that will see the light of day at some point. Some projects move really slowly though and it really takes its time. But eventually new music will come out for sure.

Find both bands and loads more on our mega playlist on Spotify:

Karol Kamiński

DIY rock music enthusiast and web-zine publisher from Warsaw, Poland. Supporting DIY ethics, local artists and promoting hardcore punk, rock, post rock and alternative music of all kinds via IDIOTEQ online channels.
Contact via [email protected]

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