There is something pretty bloody satisfying about catching up with an artist a couple of years down the track and being able to pick up the conversation almost exactly where you left it.
The last time I caught up with TUNGSTEN vocalist Mike Andersson, the Swedish metallers were preparing to unleash The Grand Inferno. The band were pushing their sound further, getting ready to hit the road with Sonata Arctica and continuing to build on the Nordic foundations that had been there since the beginning.
Fast-forward two years and TUNGSTEN have been busy as hell, with plenty of touring, plenty of writing and plenty of time spent on stage. Now album number five is ready to land.
Ashes arrives October 9 through PERCEPTION / Reigning Phoenix Music, and while it is very much a continuation of what TUNGSTEN have built across We Will Rise, Tundra, Bliss and The Grand Inferno, it also finds the band stretching that sound into some pretty unexpected places.
We are talking industrial metal, massive melodic choruses, Nordic pride, Spanish and Latin flavours, horror stories, dark lyrics, ridiculously catchy hooks and, because apparently TUNGSTEN can get away with just about anything at this point, some bloody yodelling as well.
When Mike and I caught up again for Crannk, he described Ashes as a natural continuation of The Grand Inferno. TUNGSTEN still keep one foot planted firmly in that original Nordic sound established on We Will Rise and Tundra, but album by album they have continued pushing the boundaries of what can fit inside the TUNGSTEN universe.
For Mike, The Grand Inferno may have been slightly more melodic at its most melodic moments, while Ashes takes things another step towards the band’s industrial side without sacrificing those massive hooks. And hooks are something this album has by the truckload.
Mike revealed that “Supernova”, set to be the focus track when the album arrives, is essentially built around a simple “cuckoo” hook. It sounds ridiculous written down, but it works ridiculously well coming out of the speakers.
That is part of what makes TUNGSTEN interesting. They are serious about writing good songs, but they have never reached that point where everything has to become painfully serious. If something works, it works, and if that something happens to be yodelling, then chuck some fucking yodelling in.
FROM THE GRAND INFERNO COME THE ASHES
The album title itself immediately had me thinking back to our previous conversation. We have gone from The Grand Inferno to Ashes, and surely that couldn’t be an accident.
It isn’t.
Mike confirmed that there is a deliberate continuation between the two albums, both musically and visually. At the end of the video for “The Grand Inferno”, the band’s mascot Wolfram essentially meets his end, falling into lava and turning to ash.
But ashes don’t necessarily represent the end of something. On the new album, Wolfram returns as “Wolfram 2.0”, as Mike puts it. The CD and vinyl booklet continues the story visually, showing his resurrection and turning Ashes into something closer to a rebirth than a funeral.
That idea sits nicely at the centre of the album. This isn’t TUNGSTEN tearing up everything they have built and starting again; it is the same band taking what already works, throwing it into the fire and seeing what comes back out.
THROW IN SOME YODELLING — WHY THE HELL NOT?
There probably isn’t a better example of that adventurous streak than album opener “Joker”.
Nick Johansson’s ability to yodel wasn’t exactly a secret within the band. At some point in the rehearsal room he started doing it, everybody heard it, and the obvious reaction apparently became: why don’t we put that in a song?
Eventually, “Joker” gave them somewhere to put it.
Underneath that playful musical idea, though, the song has a much darker character. The lyrics centre around a mysterious Joker, games, deception and two people seemingly caught inside the same twisted dance.
Unlike plenty of videos where the visuals have bugger-all to do with the song itself, Mike explained that “Joker” deliberately ties the video into the lyrical story. The result manages to be strange, dark and genuinely funny at the same time.
There is even a yodelling sequence involving subtitles about apple pie that has absolutely nothing to do with the lyrics, and it had me sitting there with a massive grin on my face.
That sense of fun isn’t accidental either. Nick has increasingly taken responsibility for directing and editing the band’s videos, while the entire group brings ideas into the process. Mike sees that collaboration as part of what gives the videos their own personality, with everybody getting heard and throwing something into the pot.
Sometimes that pot apparently contains apple pie and yodelling.
Metal doesn’t always have to stare at you with its arms crossed. Sometimes it is okay to have a bit of fun with the bastard.
“YOU HAVE TO SEE ME FOR WHO I AM”
“Bite My Tongue” hits from a completely different angle, and this one gets personal.
The frustration in the song is immediately relatable: somebody continually expecting you to behave a certain way, misunderstanding who you are, pushing their version of the truth onto you and putting you down instead of lifting you up.
Mike calls it an “anger song”, and at its centre is a simple demand to be recognised as yourself. Not the version somebody else has created or what they expect you to become, but who you actually are.
There is another dimension to the track for Mike as well because “Bite My Tongue” has become one of his favourite songs from Ashes to perform live.
He makes a distinction between favourite album tracks and favourite songs to actually get onstage and perform, and this one firmly belongs in the second category. Listening to Ashes, you can hear why, because a lot of these tracks feel designed to escape the studio and those choruses feel ready for rooms full of people shouting them back at the stage.
FROM SWEDEN TO GRAN CANARIA
Then TUNGSTEN completely change the scenery.
“Fuego Del Sol” brings Spanish and Latin American flavour into the band’s metal framework, and this one has a particularly personal connection for Mike. His wife is from Gran Canaria in Spain’s Canary Islands, and after living together for twelve years, Mike has spent years hearing Spanish spoken around him.
He doesn’t consider himself fluent, but he understands plenty and has naturally absorbed the sounds and rhythms of the language. That made singing in Spanish considerably less intimidating than it might appear from the outside.
There was also somebody pretty bloody qualified sitting nearby to make sure he didn’t completely butcher it. His wife effectively became his vocal producer, with Mike checking whether something sounded genuinely Spanish before getting the seal of approval and moving on.
There was, however, one tiny problem: “Fuego.”
Mike later learned from a friend in Gran Canaria that his pronunciation wasn’t quite how a native Spanish speaker would naturally say it. His wife had let him get away with it, Mike laughed it off, and really, the imperfection almost makes the story better.
Rather than TUNGSTEN bolting a random Spanish idea onto a metal song for novelty value, “Fuego Del Sol” comes from something already woven into Mike’s everyday life.
THE NORTH WILL RISE
Another deeply rooted part of the band’s identity appears on “The North Will Rise”, and this one also brings our two interviews neatly together.
When Mike and I spoke in 2024, TUNGSTEN were preparing to head out with Sonata Arctica. This time around, Sonata Arctica vocalist Tony Kakko is part of the album.
“The North Will Rise” celebrates the Nordic region, bringing Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden together around ideas of friendship, shared culture and unity.
Mike also wanted to clear up an interpretation he had seen floating around online. For him, there is nothing exclusionary behind the track and the song isn’t about standing against other cultures or claiming superiority over anybody else.
It is simply about people from neighbouring countries feeling close to one another and celebrating that connection through unity, friendship and sticking together.
Coming from Australia but having strong Danish family roots myself, it was one of the tracks on Ashes I connected with immediately. There is something about Nordic music, history, landscape and culture that has always grabbed me, and “The North Will Rise” taps directly into that sense of place.
THE UNDERRATED BEAUTY OF AUTUMN
Where “The North Will Rise” celebrates a region, “Sunshine of Fall” narrows the focus right down to a season that Mike reckons doesn’t get nearly enough love.
Summer gets beaches, sunshine and parties, while winter gets snow-covered landscapes. Autumn often gets grey skies and complaints about rain, but Mike and Karl Johansson see something else in it.
For Mike, there is beauty in the colours of changing leaves, the smell of forests and trees, the quality of the light and that period when the world around you is changing before winter arrives.
He admits Swedish autumn isn’t quite as romantic when it follows a miserable, rainy summer, but give him a warm summer followed by one of those clear, colourful autumns and he loves it.
Musically, “Sunshine of Fall” is also one where Mike had a particularly strong hand in the arrangement. The goal was straightforward: find a bloody good hook.
TUNGSTEN always aim for melody, but some songs demand that extra effort to find the part that immediately sticks, and Mike feels “Sunshine of Fall” landed exactly where they wanted it: melodic, groovy and catchy as hell.
WHO THE HELL IS TED?
Then there is “Ted the Exorcist”.
I had questions. Mike had… fewer answers, and to be fair, I bloody love that.
After asking who Ted actually was and what twisted horror story was hiding behind the track, Mike laughed and admitted he hadn’t worked on the song since recording it and couldn’t remember the entire story. Karl wrote the lyrics, Ted is an exorcist, and beyond that, we might have to ask Karl.
What Mike could tell me is that the track represents the more industrial side of TUNGSTEN, and sometimes that’s enough. Not every song needs a twenty-minute philosophical explanation attached to it, and sometimes you write something weird, heavy and cool called “Ted the Exorcist” and let the bastard loose.
THE ONE MIKE REALLY WANTS YOU TO HEAR
One of my favourite parts of any album interview is getting beyond the singles and into the tracks that don’t necessarily get videos or haven’t been pushed all over social media for months before release.
Those are often the ones that become personal favourites once you’ve lived with an album for a while, so I asked Mike which deeper cut from Ashes he was most excited for people to discover.
The answer came immediately: “Happy.”
Not only is it one of his favourites, Mike reckons it might be his number one track on the entire album. Even more interesting, “Happy” nearly opened Ashes.
The band and label went back and forth over the running order before ultimately deciding “Joker” should lead the record instead. “Happy” was also considered as one of the singles before “Fuego Del Sol” eventually took its place.
The title is wonderfully deceptive too. The music itself is dark and driven, paired against lyrics that are considerably more upbeat, with a melodic chorus tying those contrasting moods together.
That contrast is exactly the kind of thing that sums up where TUNGSTEN sit in 2026.
TUNGSTEN KEEP MOVING
Five albums in, TUNGSTEN don’t sound like a band interested in drawing lines around themselves.
The Nordic foundations remain, along with the melody and those huge choruses, but around them you can hear a band increasingly comfortable throwing almost anything into the mix if it serves the song.
Industrial metal, Latin rhythms, Spanish vocals, yodelling, horror, seasonal beauty, Nordic unity and cuckoos all somehow still sound like TUNGSTEN.
Maybe that is the biggest sign of how far the band have come. You don’t need to protect your identity quite so fiercely once you know exactly what that identity is.
Ashes isn’t TUNGSTEN abandoning what came before. It’s Wolfram climbing back out of the fire, a continuation and a rebirth, and perhaps most importantly, it’s four musicians clearly still having a bloody good time finding out just how far they can push this thing.
Mike had one final request for everyone preparing to dive into the record: crank it loud enough that the neighbours start listening to TUNGSTEN too.
Sounds like a pretty solid plan to me.
TUNGSTEN release Ashes on October 9 through PERCEPTION / Reigning Phoenix Music.
Pre-order Ashes now at this location: https://tungsten.rpm.link/ashesPR
TUNGSTEN are:
Mike Andersson – Lead Vocals
Karl Johansson – Bass, Keyboards, Vocals
Nick Johansson – Guitar
Anders Johansson – Drums
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