Swedish calm-your-ass-down psych jammers Kungens Män will self-release their new album, Resande i Rockmusik (‘travelers in rock music’), on Sept. 12, through their own imprint Kungens Ljud & Bild with a limited, hopefully-tariff-avoidant US-based pressing through Echodelick Records. Their first release of the year, it follows behind 2024’s two-part För Samtida Djur (review here and here) sit-in, and that too was a happening happening, my friends, but they’ve not been a band to let things dwell too long — for example, setting up an expectation of more than one full-length a year — and forward movement is a big part of any kind of travel you’re bound to do.

There are four songs on Resande i Rockmusik and each of them is a gift as regards vibe. Between the opening title-track (9:37), “Skördetröskan” (12:32), “Respekt för Naturen” (11:11) and “Magisk Magi” (11:41) there is not one among them that occupies the same mindspace, and yet the 45-mnute procession is as fluid as the band have ever been. In particular, “Respekt för Naturen” calls into pastoralia hard enough to earn the name and make one have to wonder how Kungens Män haven’t yet had a release through El Paraiso.

And that’s after “Resande i Rockmusik” has laid out a warm undercurrent of bass and drum groove beneath meditative guitar, conversation sampled overtop there, gone and back again as a bridge to “Skördetröskan.” In any language, they sound like they’re talking in a van, so the ‘travelers’ idea becomes literal as well, and sonic transportation is just a given when they’re involved.

Either way, “Skördetröskan” (‘combine harvester’) is more progressive and also more uptempo. The repetitive and complementary figures on guitar remind of Endless Boogie‘s dug-in sense of cool, and that’s nothing to complain about as they dwell in the arrangement, fleshing out with keyboard and more conversation early on and evolving a guitar shimmer as they go that carries them through the song’s organic coming apart.

Somebody in English saying they can’t wait to see them again. Fans. At the show. After the show. It’s from there at “Respekt för Naturen” picks up with a solid backbeat and a sprawling landscape of guitar that recalls the best of 2000s-era European heavy psychedelia as well as probably half of what calls itself desert rock, if it thinks of it. They’re holding boogie in reserve for “Magisk Magi,” and fair enough, but “Respekt för Naturen” sounds like a signature piece in the making and is among the most vivid of their evocations.

It’s crucial that, as serene as it feels, “Respekt för Naturen” holds its movement throughout. It seems to be what keeps the piece from meandering too far to come back, sure, but the linear groove becomes part of the hypnotic effect as well, and if the drums were any busier it would take away from the balance between atmosphere and movement.

But “Magisk Magi,” which opens with about 40 seconds of dialogue ending with the in-English punchline, “We’re looking for the festival,” awaits. From there, the setup from the motion of “Respekt för Naturen” is given its payoff in a swinging and mildly cosmic flow, some kind of synth drone in back maybe unless I’m hearing things (possible with these guys) and a jangly chug that picks up and urges you to dance like it’s an alternate-universe 1963 and garage rock was just invented on the spot. Right then. Did you catch it?

If not, it’s cool. It’ll be there your next time around, and given how effectively the band lead through a resonant mellowing before unveiling that refreshing boost to finish, I’m going to guess that those in the headspace for it are going to pay return visits. I’m talking about myself there, too.

Happy to host this album stream, and my thanks to the band for permission to do so. More info follows from the PR wire.

Enjoy:

Preorder link: https://kungensman.bandcamp.com

Kungens Män from Stockholm has been out on a journey for well over 10 years now. What started out as an unpretentious get together of friends with instruments has morphed and developed into a free rock ensemble that has released 17 albums (some say it is more depending on how you count) and toured around Europe many times. The leading star has been a musical method that has been as consequent as ever changing – follow the drone wherever it takes you. And it has guided Kungens Män through musical landscapes of fuzz driven noise rock to free jazz howls, from introspective ambient to outgoing quirky funk explosions, but always with a steady beat and a clear vision of direction and identity that builds on the bond and trust between the players in the band.

The new album, Resande i rockmusik (Travellers in Rock Music), wants to celebrate and capture this journey, the actual burning of rubber as well as the inner space travel. Interspersed between and in songs are recordings of chatting at the tour bus, from pubs on the road and from the endless search for the venue of the show of the night, often more or less accidentally recorded. Most people listening won’t understand a word, but that doesn’t really matter, it’s just all part of the flow.

The album cover was created by bass player Magnus Öhrn as usual, but this time around it is based on a photo from Christmas Eve 1991, when guitarist Mikael Tuominen was still practicing driving to get his driver’s licence. The vehicle in the trench is his first car, a Ford Taurus from 1977.

Resande i rockmusik is released by the band-run label Kungens Ljud & Bild, on September 12, 2025.

Good news for US CUSTOMERS! Echodelick Records will do a US pressing of the new Kungens Män album “Resande i rockmusik” 🔥100 copies on black vinyl. Go follow @echodelickrecords and stay up to date!

Kungens Män on Bandcamp

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Echodelick Records website

Echodelick Records on Bandcamp

Echodelick Records on Instagram

Echodelick Records on Facebook

Hail the kingsmen, as the many triumphant journeys of Swedish heavy psychedelic explorers Kungens Män have led them to the cosmos itself. Kungens Ljud och Bild is both the name of the record and the name of the band’s imprint handling the European side of the release — the US is out through Centripetal Force — and it translates to ‘The King’s Sound and Vision.’ Immediately, the mostly-instrumental but for some rather urgent spoken word in Swedish on “I Hjalles kök” (“In Hjalle’s Kitchen”) long-player sets its synesthetic standard. And the five-song/55-minute offering from the Stockholm six-piece only meets it along the way, melding improv-rooted jamming with mellow space and krautrock, resulting in the multi-tiered hypnosis of a song like the also-appropriately-named, 15-minute “Stora rummet” (“Large Room”), which follows opener “När piskan viner” (“When the Whip Wines”) and layers drifty bounces of synth or guitar or whatever it is behind a sunshiny guitar figure like they’re the string section the band was able to get cheap because they’re from an alternate dimension.

Yes, that’s a compliment. Here’s another: a band of this style — any of them — will fall entirely flat without chemistry. I don’t care how talented the guitarist or the bassist or the keyboardist or the drummer or whoever is. If it doesn’t gel, the band will suck, then die. Kungens Män launch “När piskan viner” like it’s a rocket to Charon with stops on the way for gas, and the space-bound motion of that song — shorter at just 7:44 than everything save the closer “Stora rummet (Edit),” at 5:58 — establishes outright that wherever they’re going on the songs that follow, the listener can be well assured they’ll reach their destination. Comprised of guitarists Hans Hjelm, Gustav Nygren and Mikael Tuominen (the latter also vocals, bass), bassist Magnus Öhrn, synthesist Peter Erikson and drummer Mattias Indy Pettersson, Kungens Män are able to conjure both the haze and the clearest path through it. Maybe that’s the sound and vision. It would make a fitting kind of sense, since on Kungens Ljud & Bild, often it’s both at once.

As straightforward a signal the opening riff of “När piskan viner” is — it’s time to go! — the prevailing vibe throughout Kungens Ljud & Bild is more serene than pushy. That’s not to say that the vinyl-concluding/digitally-penultimate “Vaska lyckokaka” (“Scrap a Fortune Cookie”) doesn’t find its way into a gorgeous outbound progression across its 11-minute span. On the contrary. In what sounds like a piece carved out of a longer exploration as it fades in at the start, what’s captured in the early moments of that song is crucial to understanding how Kungens Män manifest the chemistry noted above. The drums come in locked into a swinging groove over some fuzzier low end and an accompanying casual guitar strum that soon finds a complementary shape. Keys are there, a cleaner guitar tone arrives. Sounds like everybody’s aboard by about 1:10, and they’re underway with an odd note here for good measure, but soon that clean tone is topping the backing swirl with a somehow-dreamy progression that lasts until after three minutes in as a fuzzier guitar arrives to complement, growing more manic for a few seconds, trading off getting back in line, and so on.

You don’t necessarily realize it yet, but Kungens Män are talking here, and the transition is already under way. There’s a brighter guitar tone in the mix as of 4:59, and that begins to shift the rhythm between the other two strains and over the next minute it pushes the lead clean tone to space out, which it has done by the time they’re at 6:30, though the motion is so smooth it’s hard to pinpoint any more exact time when it happens (they say 5:43, but I’m not sure). And from then on, they’re free to introduce wavelengths of distortion, to let the keyboard go wandering, and to gradually bring the procession to a natural conclusion with a final, somewhat understated, cymbal crash. This isn’t just the kind of thing that not everybody can do. It’s an unspoken communication of creativity between six individuals, and even among heavy psychedelic acts — hell, even among mostly-instrumental, jam-minded heavy psychedelic acts with a penchant for warm tones and classic grooves — that makes Kungens Män stand out.

The prior “I Hjalles kök” works similarly in fading up from what was probably a jam that gradually took this shape, and I don’t know whether Tuominen‘s spoken vocals over it — drawing from a notebook of nonsense songtitles according to the band, arranged and delivered like poetry — happened at the time or were layered in later, but it feels perhaps like a response on the band’s part to the inevitable question of why they don’t have a singer, which in their case is even more ridiculous because the core of their project is so outside the realm of verses and choruses they’d be a completely different band if they did.

But the mad David Byrne-esque Swedish poetics does the job well enough, and emphasizes Kungens Män‘s willingness to experiment as regards the central tenets of their approach, the detail and complexity of the instrumental progression beneath his voice supporting but not at all staid with an uptempo drum progression and tense low-frequency fuzz.  Above all of this, uniting the two sides of the album with their varied takes and even including the edit of “Stora rummet” on the end of the DL, Kungens Ljud & Bild is rife with purpose. Those familiar with the band will find it a more active release on average than 2020’s Trappmusik (review here), but will already know as well that these things are not all one or the other.

Consider though that among the sundry live and studio offerings Kungens Män have made over their 10 years together, this is the closest they’ve ever come to releasing a self-titled album. If one extrapolates from that a kind of representation of the band’s part of who they believe they are, then this material feels all the more definitive. More likely, however — and a negative perhaps for clean narrative but certainly a positive for the actual listening experience — this particular world is one more stop along Kungens Män‘s progressive journey, and there will be more to find as they continue forward.

Kungens Män on Bandcamp

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Kungens Män on Tumblr

Centripetal Force Records on Facebook

Centripetal Force Records on Instagram

Centripetal Force Records website

Drifting psych-jazz improvocateurs Kungens Män are gearing up to release a new 2LP in less than two weeks’ time. The Stockholm-based explorers — amorphous in personnel and sound, as ever — were last heard from in April with the offering Tomhetens Furste, a long-playing three-tracker streaming and pressed to limited tape through Eggs in Aspic. The latest work is Dag & Natt, and it will be out on vinyl through Adansonia Records and on CD through Kungens Ljud & Bild July 31 bringing a wash of psych-kraut who-knows-what that’s sure to melt brainstems and turn them into a lysergic homebrew at will in a prevailing weirdo wash. Don’t believe me? Tomhetens Furste is streaming at the bottom of this post. Put it on and just see if there’s any getting out alive.

Info on Dag & Natt comes courtesy of the PR wire:

Kungens Män – Dag & Natt

A soothing Aylerian saxophone wakes you up in the morning. Your head gets going by lunch, while tapping your feet to a stomping groove with free flowing guitars on top. A hard driving krautrock song takes you through the evening. The veiled night enters in nuances of black. After the nightmarish turns inside your most hidden parts of the mind, a motorik beat picks you up to make the walk back home. And then it starts over again.

This is mood music for the adventurous. At all times.

Kungens Män are back with the new double-LP ”Dag & Natt” (Day & Night) on Adansonia Records (double vinyl-LP) and Kungens Ljud & Bild (double CD) on July 31st, 2017.

Kungens Män started out in 2012 in Stockholm, Sweden, when a bunch of good friends decided to bring some instruments when hanging out. The random jam sessions became more and more regular and soon Kungens Män started recording it all, completely unfiltered and without safety nets. The music soon found its way to the internet and a buzz occurred, connecting with listeners all over the globe. From the debut show with Master Musicians Of Bukkake and onwards, every show has been a different story. Always new sounds and improvisations, different guest musicians, different happenings. Kungens Män are rooted in the psychedelic/drone rock tradition of bands such as Träd, Gräs & Stenar, but also add influences from krautrock, shoegaze, noiserock and free jazz. They will always add something new to the mix to challenge themselves and the audiences’ preconceptions about what Kungens Män are all about.

Kungens Män have played at festivals such as The Psychedelic Network Festival (Würzburg, DE), PsyKA Festival (Karlsruhe, DE) and The Copenhagen Psych Fest (DK) and played with bands like Øresund Space Collective, Master Musicians of Bukkake, Yuri Gagarin, Spelljammer, The Spacelords and Radar Men From The Moon. They toured Europe in 2015 and 2016. In August 2017 they are invited by Mani Neumaier to play at the Guru Guru festival, Finki Open Air, along with acts such as Arthur Brown, The Pretty Things and of course, Guru Guru.

The first vinyl-LP “Förnekaren” by Kungens Män was released by the German label Adansonia Records in 2015, and was a success with critics and fans alike. The next double-LP “Stockholm Maraton” came out on Adansonia Records in September 2016. The third double-LP on Adansonia – “Dag & Natt” will be released on July 31st, 2017.

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Kungens Män, Tomhetens Furste (2017)