Orbit Culture, Sweden's Hottest Death-Metal Export, Brings Tour to Denver This Week

Orbit Culture is bringing Swedish death metal into the 21st century.

The band from Eksjö, a small city situated almost equidistant from Gothenburg and Stockholm, formed in 2013, a generation after the melodic subgenre known for its buzzsaw guitars originated in those bigger metropolitan areas. But the influence of native groups such as At the Gates and In Flames still reverberates.

That’s one of the reasons that Niklas Karlsson, Orbit Culture’s lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, got into his newfound hometown scene, even though there wasn’t much Swedish death metal going on compared to the 1990s heyday.

“I was always outside of all the bands. I was looking in,” he says. “I didn’t really know anybody. I got to know one guy, which led to another guy. Then I was like, ‘Fuck, yeah, I’m going to start my own band.’”

During that time, there were only a handful of groups doing something similar to what Orbit Culture plays.

“Back then, there were four or five or six metal bands, which is a lot in a town of 10,000 people,” Karlsson recalls.

But now, over a decade in, “that’s gone away. We’re the only ones left,” he adds with a laugh.

What Orbit Culture — which also includes guitarist Richard Hansson, bassist Fredrik Lennartsson and drummer Christopher Wallerstedt — does best is respect those domestic roots, while carrying the flag forward with a fresh take on Swedish death metal that marries metalcore musicality and the raw power at the genre’s original core.

“Many Swedes are proud of it, especially those who are into rock music and know In Flames and At the Gates — a new generation [of Swedish death metal] I have a hard time defining,” Karlsson admits. “I don’t know if I’m getting older myself and I’m getting secluded these days. But the Swedes over there are proud of what happened in the ’90s.”
Orbit Culture is surely making a new wave of fans proud and breaking stateside behind the 2023 album Descent and follow-up EP, The Forgotten. And the fearsome foursome started the year by signing with Century Media Records.

“Watching Orbit Culture’s rise to becoming one of the greatest new metal bands in the world and now working with them is inspiring,” Philipp Schulte, Century Media vice president and global head, said via press release at the time. “I’ve personally been a fan since the beginning. They are part of both metal and Century Media’s future in a very exciting way.”

The Swedes are currently on the road supporting Slipknot and sprinkling in some headlining shows where they can. Orbit Culture will play the Gothic Theatre on Thursday, August 22, with local act Glacial Tomb opening.

After the current run, Orbit Culture will be part of Knotfest Brazil in October, then will head out on a U.K. tour with Bullet for My Valentine and Trivium that starts in January and kicks off 2025.

The band didn’t necessarily plan to be playing out so much this year, but it’s hard to turn down such badass opportunities, even if finishing the next record must wait for now.

“We were like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, thank you.’ Accepting everything, even though we were supposed to have the rest of the year off to write the new album,” Karlsson shares. “The writing of the new album is going so well, we thought, ‘Yeah, we have time.’ You cannot decline Knotfest or Slipknot offers, so we have to do it and make the new album work alongside that.”

“It’s a good problem to have,” he adds.

“It’s been madness in the best way possible,” Karlsson continues, tucked away in a nondescript hotel workspace somewhere in Baltimore. “We feel very good. Even though we had two releases come out at the same time, we’re getting the best opportunities to do tours like this.”

Descent single “Vultures of North” has reached nearly six million streams on Spotify, while the other four top songs have amassed at least three million. So yeah, it’s safe to say it doesn’t matter when Orbit Culture puts out music — people are going to eat it up. That’s good news for the band. For fans, hearing Karlsson talk about how the group quietly worked on new music after returning from a European headlining tour earlier this year is even better news.

“We got a lot of demos done, which is super sick. For me, what takes the most time is demos. The whole writing the spine from start to end of each song,” he explains, though nothing has been officially announced yet. “Once I have that in the ballpark where we want it to be, that’s a really big stress reliever, so now I’m really confident that we can keep up with the deadlines and the strategical moves.”

In the meantime, Karlsson and company will continue to wear the Swedish death metal tag humbly wherever they go, even though back home, it’s just called metal.

“Obviously, I can hear the Swedish death metal stuff in there, too, but for me it’s always been metal. Riffs, choruses, metal, some fucking blast beats here and there. It’s a wall of sound,” he concludes. “It should be big and atmospheric, too, with big riffs.”

Orbit Culture, with Glacial Tomb, 6:30 p.m. Thursday, August 22, Gothic Theatre, 3263 South Broadway. Tickets are $35.