Flowers Must Die

It’s been quite a stretch since Flowers Must Die have had a proper album out. The interim hasn’t been totally quiet, filled with all manner of live albums, cutout collections, remixes, and lost tracks; but with Tynstnad, the band taps back into the conduit of collective chaos that has long informed their works. The band sought to divine a far older pipeline as well, and the new album found them decamped to Silence Studios, the remote recording studio that once housed the Swedish label of the same name. It was the site of recordings by Bo Hansson, Kebnekajse, and Träd Gräs Och Stenar. The former commune was a hub of creativity and the band’s time there sought to harness the energies that had long flowed through the walls, wires, and waters of the studio.

By osmosis or oxidation, the band absorbed something from and imbued it into the sinews of Tynstnad. Charred leads kick the album into its first moments only to be iced down by flutes on “Vet Ej.” There are traces of manic boil threaded through the sax singe one “Nåja,” a song that could easily match their labelmates Goat in froth and fury. Motorik pulses melt into meditation spiked with menace on the grooved centerpiece “Mantra.” The second half loosens itself from the concrete moorings even further, leaning into the maelstrom of noise as it engulfs the band’s sound cresting out of “Mantra,” occasionally catching hold to shake the listener side-to-side before ending on an eight-minute closer that turns repetition into hypnotism, then wanders off into the black of night. The band sought something in the Swedish hills and from the sounds of Tynstnad it seems that they found it. It’s been a long time coming, but certainly worth the wait.

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