thrown - 'Extraordinary Hype Following Extended Pain & Excessive Guilt'

Every so often, a new band comes along with a spark like no other.

Parkway Drive. Bring Me The Horizon. Polaris. Sleep Token. Spiritbox. All these acts emerged with extraordinary hype that spread far and wide across the heavy music scene. And the best part was their talents equally lived up to expectations.

The latest outfit to join the hierarchy of global fanfare is thrown - a menacing four-piece straight outta Sweden, equipped with ultra-fast songs and an online secrecy much like their hype-building counterparts Sleep Token. Hellbent on hearing first-hand about their rise in popularity, and forthcoming debut album Excessive Guilt (our review here), we hit the ground running to spend some time with the Arising Empire band while they were in Australia supporting Alpha Wolf on the Half Living Things Tour.

After tearing up stages for the very first time down under, attracting unprecedented audiences watching each SOLD OUT show's opening slot (and their own headliner in Perth), vocalist Marcus Lundqvist and guitarists Johan Liljeblad and Andreas Malm agreed to a candid catch up, moments after leaving the stage at the last stop on their Aussie debut in Brisbane...

thrown, it has been an absolute honour and pleasure watching you guys tear up stages across the country. Your first time down under, take everything in... How was it?

Andreas: I'd say this is probably the coolest tour we've done so far. The response has been completely insane. It's insane. So yeah, we're having the time our lives here.

Marcus: Obviously we had high expectations, but it's been even better.

You guys flew into Perth, which is on the western side, the most isolated side. They don't get tours over there, so they get quite angry. But you sold out your first headline show there, which is fucking nuts. Absolutely incredible. Did you have any anticipations that the hype will be as big as what it's been so far?

Andreas: I'd say no. I'd say the hype is bigger than we had expected for sure. Especially with the Perth shows selling out. We had no expectations for the headline show. It was just a show and then it sold out the day before or something. We were like, 'Okay, that's sick'.

[gallery type="square" ids="https://wallofsoundau.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Thrown_657A0197-Edit_Photo-Charlyn-Cameron.jpg|,https://wallofsoundau.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Thrown_657A0223_Photo-Charlyn-Cameron.jpg|,https://wallofsoundau.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Thrown_657A0265-Edit_Photo-Charlyn-Cameron.jpg|"]

Photo Gallery by Charlyn Cameron. Insta: @chuck_stuff

You guys made the most of your trip down here. I saw you drove from Newcastle to Brisbane and got to see a bit of the countryside. Did you get to engage with a lot of Australian culture? Did you see the kangaroos yet?

Andreas: We saw [turning to his bandmates] what was that in Perth? Where we saw kangaroos?!

Johan: Yeah. We stopped on the way and just checked out wild kangaroos for a second, but very quickly. So I dunno, probably not the entire spectrum of Australian culture, but good enough.

Have you been fed Vegemite though? That's the big question.

Johan: Unfortunately, yes!

All: [laughs]

Andreas: Unfortunately, yeah, I'm not into it. Got to be honest.

Now, in the three years you guys have been a band, you've gone from being a relatively new band to having millions of followers across the globe, and the hype for you is just insanity. Everywhere you go, people want a piece of thrown. You guys have an amazing show, which backs up that hype. Was perfecting the craft and exploding on your goal list, or was that something that came naturally?

Marcus: I mean, we had high hopes for sure. [We] put a lot of work into it. A lot of time into it. Obviously didn't expect this much, but the main ambition was always to tour heavily and just try to reach the project's full potential.

And the people that have come along so far (around the world) have just bewildered you guys with each show you play?

Marcus: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, opening this tour and we've done mostly support shows, but we felt quite quick that it was starting to pick up.

When you talk about doing your support slots and then your headline slots, because your songs are so short, you can bash out a headline set in about 20 minutes. Does this mean that as years go by, when you get to about your 10th year or so, a headline set for thrown will be 30 songs?

Marcus: Probably. Yeah.

Andreas: Probably. But yeah, we're trying to figure that out now because we're going to headline at some point and do at least forty-five minutes to an hour. And with the energy we put on stage, it's very hard to keep it up. So we're trying to figure out, like, [where to] make pauses in between sets and where we walk off stage or something like that.

Marcus: To us, no one has the right to fucking complain if we play every single song.

Andreas: Right, exactly. There's nothing more we can do really.

It's unheard of. It's uncanny because the songs are so short, but we don't tire. When you finish your set, we're ready to go again and it just makes us want more and more. But you're at the point now where you've got your EP, the album's on the way. You've only got a limited amount of songs you can play. Are you worried that you're going to run out at some point?

Marcus: We're always writing, so I mean, every time we put out a song, it makes us more eager to put out more. And I mean, like I said, we are always writing and when the album comes out, it's going to be a short set still. But we're going to keep touring, we're going to keep releasing songs. It's nothing we worry about in any way.

So it gives you an opportunity where the album's made, it's about to come out. You're constantly writing. Does that mean the influx of music will always be there? You'll always have another EP on the way after this album. Is it going to be that consistent?

Marcus: Not like an EP or an album conceptually, but we're always trying to write the next good song, obviously. One song at a time, really, and a perk of playing every song we have is that all the fans learn each song. No song goes to waste.

Now talking about the songs, 'on the verge' speaks about the internal anxiety pressures and coming close to giving up. Following its success and your newfound notoriety, has that changed your perspective on the world?

Marcus: You mean like less depressed?

In a way! Yeah, kind of like that. I understand that when you wrote it, you were at a point where you were just fucking done with the world. You wanted to express that, get that out there. Seeing the amount of people relating to the song and connecting with it, does it make you feel like, 'oh, well, the world's not that bad'?

Marcus: That's a contradicting thing with all heavy, angry music that you write songs mostly about heavy topics, frustration and anger, and then you're playing in front of hundreds of people and you're having the time of your life, but you're going to act angry, which is kind of funny. It's weird. Yeah, for sure.

It's just cool that the shit that you've experienced can help people. I would be lying if I said that's why we're doing it, but it is an amazing thing, really. It can be overwhelming too. I'm trying to think of why it's overwhelming, but I mean maybe self-explanatory.

Talking about the album, Excessive Guilt was not my first choice for what the title should have been. I would've gone with something along the lines of Songs To Have Sex To, because both are over in two minutes...

All: [laughs]

Obviously, Excessive Guilt came from the lyrics, but is that an encapsulation of the way you were feeling when you wrote that lot of music?

Marcus: That joke, kind of put me off [laughs] One more time please.

The album's called Excessive Guilt. Is that an encapsulation of the way you felt when you were putting these songs together?

Marcus: Pretty much. It's weird. We kind of see this as chapter two after Extended Pain.

Andreas: Yeah, an extension of it.

Marcus: But at the same time it's not really. Obviously it's related [but] I haven't discussed that that much...

Johan: I think it's a good title for summarising all the songs on this record. Extended Pain was for the EP and it's like a part two, pretty much.

Exactly. And it kind of carries on Extended Pain, Excessive Guilt.

Marcus: Exactly. A lot of it is about punishing yourself too hard.

So there could be an EP in future where you write songs about punishing yourself in the bedroom and then there's still two-minute, one-minute-and-a-half type of songs.

Johan: Those songs are going to be like 45 minutes long.

Andreas: Super long [laughs]

Look, I don't know what a quickie is. I've got no idea what that is, but there's a lot of Australian men out there who are like, 'Yeah, 30 seconds is more than enough'.

Johan: God damn.

So the short songs, obviously this is a big thing everyone's talking about. You are the first band I know that can do a headline set and it's over in 20 minutes. As you grow, do you think you'll increase the length of the songs or do you feel like you get the message across in that short amount of time?

Andreas: I think for me personally, if I would listen to thrown, if I was not in the band, I wouldn't want more than two minutes of this intense shit. I think it's the perfect length of this type of music.

Marcus: We don't time any of our songs while writing it.

Andreas: No, it just has to be right from start to finish.

It just happens organically like that?

Marcus: We just write what we like and it's just part of a style really. But it's no well thought out recipe that everyone thinks or have theories about. It's just, our influences is also a lot of modern hip hop and some of us also come more from the hardcore scene where a two-minute or one-and-a-half-minute-long song is nothing out of the ordinary, whatsoever.

Alright, so where to from here? You've got these songs, you've been to Australia. The album's coming out. From here you do European Festivals, US shows. Are there plans to come back to Australia?

Marcus: Now we kinda have to.

Andreas: Definitely. I mean, it would be weird if we didn't.

In the history that I've been doing Wall of Sound for 10 years, the only other hype I've seen like this (in recent years) is Spiritbox. So if that's enough evidence to keep doing what you're doing and get back down here, come sleep on my couch and play shows every night. Thanks for taking the time out, I know you don't do interviews that often, so this is the biggest privilege. Thank you so much and all the best for the album release.

All: Appreciate that. Thank you so much. Hell yeah.

Interview by Paul 'Browny' Brown @brownypaul

Excessive Guilt is out Friday, August 30th via Arising Empire.
Pre-order here

read the 10/10 album review here