Review & Full Album Premiere: Dozer, Rewind to Return: Rarities, Singles and B-Sides
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on July 31st, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Dozer‘s new rare-tracks compilation, Rewind to Return: Rarities, Singles and B-Sides, is at least 25 years in the making. Released this week on Blues Funeral Recordings, it is in-part an accounting for the band’s earliest work, a succession of pre-first-album demos and three splits with Demon Cleaner — whose drummer, Karl Daniel Lidén, would remain an essential component of Dozer‘s story through the years, from recording and playing drums for a time up to remastering this material — and a cataloguing of off-album material. The tracklisting is varied in its origins and — with thanks to founding Dozer guitarist Tommi Holappa — appears with the sources below. So far as I know, this information hasn’t been released yet elsewhere:
Rewind to Return: Rarities, Singles and B-Sides tracklisting (w/ source)
1. Tanglefoot (Demon Cleaner vs. Dozer split, 1998)
2. Hail the Dude (Domestic Dudes split w/ Demon Cleaner, 1999)
3. Centerline (Demon Cleaner vs. Dozer split, 1998)
4. Southern Star (bonus track on Call it Conspiracy vinyl)
5. The Electrocuter (B-side on the Day of the Rope 7”, 2002)
6. Universe 75 (Unreleased early demo)
7. Serpents Head (2011 reissue bonus track for In the Tail of a Comet)
8. Rings of Saturn (LP-only bonus for Madre de Dios)
9. She (Graven Images, Misfits tribute CD, 2000)
10. Mammoth Mountain (Nerve Compilation CD with local Borlänge bands, 1997)
11. Silverball (Hawaiian Cottage split w/ Demon Cleaner, 1999)
12. Star by Star (Split 7” with Giants of Science released in Australia when we toured there in 2004, also B-side on the “Rising” cd single)
13. Season of Giants (Unreleased early demo)
14. Vinegar Fly (Sunride cover from Vultures session, c. 2004)
15. Two Ton Butterfly (Unreleased early demo)
The three demos — “Universe 75,” “Season of Giants” and “Two Ton Butterfly” — either come from 1998’s Universe 75 demo tape (discussed here) or concurrent recordings. The band sound like kids because they were. The material from the three Demon Cleaner splits — 1998’s Demon Cleaner vs. Dozer (discussed here), 1999’s Hawaiian Cottage (discussed here) and 1999’s Domestic Dudes (discussed here) — is just one step removed from those rougher sessions, and for those more familiar with their later work or who got on board with 2023’s righteous reunion offering, Drifting in the Endless Void (review here), might be surprising in its desert-rocking style, but Kyuss was a defining influence for a lot of bands at this point, and “Season of Giants” and “Two Ton Butterfly” bear that out, the latter like a specific attempt to capture some of the same energy of Kyuss‘ “Rodeo,” with its explosive volume trades and resultant grooveriding.
Compare that to “Star by Star” from a 2004 split or the depressive-lyric Sunride cover “Vinegar Fly,” which was previously a bonus track on the 2021 reissue (discussed here) of the Vultures EP (review here), originally released in 2013 and recorded with Lidén drumming in 2004-’05 as preproduction for 2005’s Through the Eyes of Heathens (featured here; discussed here), and there’s a notable shift in both the band’s style and the impact-mindedness of the recording. That is to say the band’s sound grew between the time they were appearing on a compilation of local bands from their hometown of Borlänge with “Mammoth Mountain,” which is the earliest and jammiest track on Rewind to Return, from 1997 — they sound like babies because they were — and their refined and somewhat more aggressively charged sound that came to the fore on their 2002 third album, Call it Conspiracy (featured here, discussed here).
Dozer represent all three of their first LPs on Rewind to Return, each with a bonus track. In the case of “Rings of Saturn,” which originally appeared on the vinyl of their 2001 second album, Madre de Dios (featured here), that’s a hook worthy of its position as the centerpiece, but part of the story Dozer are telling as they look back is how they figured out who they were as a band over the course of those first seven or eight years. Holappa and fellow founding guitarist Fredrik Nordin, whose voidbound melodic callout vocals are refined in realtime across “Serpents Head,” “Rings of Saturn” and the roughly concurrent Misfits cover “She,” have proven over time to be at the core of the group, but Lidén‘s work remastering highlights just how heavy Dozer were early on in a way that the original releases never could.
To wit, the tonal beef wrought by “Tanglefoot” and “Hail the Dude” at the outset. These songs, both from Demon Cleaner splits (this being a Dozer review, I’m not going to tell you to go back and listen to Demon Cleaner, but yes, do that), are treasures for longtime fans of the band. Whether you were with them from the start and have those 7″s because you’re Johnny Groundfloor and that’s just how you do, or you came along later and have been subject to someone on YouTube’s digital rip of the vinyl, hearing the fullness of the new masters, they sound new again, and the janga-janga push of “Hail the Dude” — if 1999 could be a riff, it’d be that riff — sounds fresh enough that if you told me it was a new band, I’d be like, “Wow that’s amazing, they sound just like Dozer,” because in any era, Dozer are unmisfugginstakable.
That might be the ultimate lesson of Rewind to Return: Rarities, Singles and B-Sides — that Dozer‘s progression defines their tenure; it’s a thesis worth exploring — and as a fan of the band who’s been whining loudly for years to have their early works compiled and released (that’s right folks, I’m taking credit for the whole thing; it was me; you’re welcome), these versions of these songs remind listeners new or old of the path Dozer took to becoming one of their generation’s defining heavy rock bands. I’ll note that it’s not complete. This may be where they blow up the Death Star, but it’s not the whole story. It’s not everything, laid out with the dry procession of ‘this was on this single,’ ‘this was recorded on this afternoon at this time after we had tacos,’ etc. that one might find on a more academically-minded offering, but the thing about the story being told is that it also isn’t complete, and there are more years in addition to more songs.
I don’t know that Rewind to Return will get a follow-up or it won’t, but it could. And whether it’s taken on for nostalgia or the curiosity of newer fans, as a historical document from one of the finest rock bands Sweden ever produced or a casual saunter through part of a footnote portion of Dozer‘s catalog, the songs hold up to the span of years and the weight of expectation, and it’s not hard to hear what would’ve been so exciting about a new band coming out of the gate with these sounds. It still is.
Dozer, “Rings of Saturn” visualizer
Blues Funeral Recordings website
Blues Funeral Recordings on Bandcamp
