HAERDSMAELTA – HAERDROCK Review: Swedish Hardcore and Industrial Metal at Their Most Chaotic

Review By Glen Parkes

There are albums that arrive politely, settle into the background and wait to be discovered. HAERDSMAELTA’s HAERDROCK is not one of them. The Swedish hardcore and metal agitators come charging through the speakers with ten tracks of industrial noise, punk aggression, twisted humour and riffs that seem determined to knock modern society sideways.

This is the band’s third full-length album and their first release through Icons Creating Evil Art, and from the opening seconds of Enjoy The Feast it is obvious that HAERDSMAELTA have no intention of softening their attack. The track is a furious introduction, built around abrasive guitars, mechanical rhythms and a vocal delivery that sounds less like a sermon and more like a warning siren. The song’s targets are hypocrisy, obedience and collective decadence, but there is enough dark humour in the delivery to stop the whole thing becoming predictable.

Going For The Deep-End and Eye On The Price keep the pressure on, while Artificial Ignorance takes aim at a world where ignorance can apparently become something to celebrate. The band have a knack for making serious subjects feel wonderfully uncomfortable, throwing hardcore, industrial metal and punk into the same battered machine and seeing what comes flying out.

The Point Of No Concern is another strong moment, capturing the album’s fascination with humanity sleepwalking towards disaster. Then comes City Of The Dead, the third advance single and perhaps one of the clearest examples of what makes this band different. A frantic guitar attack, pounding rhythm section and gruff, almost spoken vocal create a dystopian landscape where the machinery keeps running while everything underneath it begins to rot. Recent coverage has also picked out the track’s mixture of hardcore, industrial repetition and post-punk tension.

The Kids Are Alt-Right is exactly as confrontational as its title suggests, using biting satire to examine political polarisation rather than delivering some tidy lecture. Guilt Machine and Smell Of Chaos continue the descent, while Vast Oceans Of Nothingness closes the record with a suitably bleak sense of emptiness.

What impresses most about HAERDROCK is that the noise has purpose. These are not ten tracks thrown together simply because loud guitars sound good. The production gives the riffs a mechanical edge while leaving enough movement for unexpected melodic touches to break through. There are echoes of industrial rock, hardcore punk, metal and post-punk, but HAERDSMAELTA never sound trapped inside any one of those boxes.

The band have been building their strange Swedish underground universe for more than a decade, with SPRAENG of F.K.Ü. and DOOM PAÉRIGNON of Snuffed by the Yakuza at its core. Their catalogue has already included The Whiter Album, All Alone In The Danger Zone and 2024’s Ground Zero One Eight, and HAERDROCK feels like a natural, nastier progression. Apple Music also lists the 2026 singles Enjoy The Feast, Artificial Ignorance and The Kids Are Alt-Right ahead of the album.

In a year crowded with angry records, HAERDROCK stands apart because its fury comes wrapped in imagination, swagger, strange hooks and a warped sense of fun.

HAERDROCK is ugly, funny, furious and strangely infectious. It does not tell you what to think; it holds up that cracked mirror and lets you decide whether what you see is ridiculous, frightening, or both.

For me, it is both — and that is exactly why it works.