MetalPunk & Hardcore
Disfear release “The Last Nail” on 20 November through Relapse Records. There are eight tracks, written across fourteen years and recorded over the last three, and it’s the Swedish band’s first record since “Live the Storm”, which came out on 22 January 2008 on the same label. The first single is “Early Graves”.
Tomas Lindberg, who also fronted At the Gates, sings on it, and Marcus Andersson plays drums. Neither will see it released. Lindberg died on 16 September 2025, aged fifty-two, of adenoid cystic carcinoma; Andersson, at the same age, of brain cancer. The band announced it in mid-September this year. Founding bassist Henrik ‘Henke’ Frykman had died in 2011, also of cancer.
“Struggle, pain, and loss,” the band’s statement begins. “Since ‘Live The Storm’ we have now lost three members of our band to cancer — Henrik, Tomas, and most recently Marcus.” They add that both men wanted the record out quickly: “Before Marcus passed, he saw a final copy of the album, and we wish to share the same joy it brought him, with you.”
The vocals predate all of it. In spring 2023, on a visit to Welfare Sounds in Gothenburg, Lindberg was only meant to make a few edits to the demo vocals and ended up re-recording all eight songs in one go. The diagnosis came later that same year. The lyrics he’d written before he knew are full of illness and endings: “Silenced through comfort / All passion in vain / Mechanical slaves / To systematic death,” runs “Early Graves”.
The instruments were tracked at God City with Kurt Ballou — who had also recorded “Live the Storm” — and at Welfare Sounds with Per Stålberg. Magnus Lindberg mixed at Redmount and Sören Von Malmborg mastered at Cosmos. The closing track is called “The Last Nail In The Last Coffin On Earth”.
Text by Roger Estivill