"You can still see the blood…” Orbit Culture drummer Christopher Wallerstedt gestures towards the wooden platform behind an old barn deep in a Swedish forest. Specifically, he’s pointing at a suspicious dark patch. Set amid the towering trees, it’s not hard to imagine this construct as the site of some strange pagan ritual. The wood sags, sodden from a combination of rain, snow and, apparently, bodily fluid. Eat your heart out, Midsommar. Except…
“It’s fake blood,” clarifies guitarist Richard Hansson, as Hammer breathes a sigh of relief. “I’m pretty sure we used a whole bucket.”
It turns out that this is where Orbit Culture filmed the video for their 2021 single, Carvings, which featured a screaming man drenched in the red stuff, some of which hasn’t washed out. The band built the wooden platform a few years earlier for their own ‘festival’. “There were four bands and we invited all our friends,” recalls Christopher.
"The second the blowtorch hit the mannequin… POOF! It exploded!"
Christopher Wallerstedt
We’re on the outskirts of Eksjö, the small town in the south of Sweden that this four-piece call home. Until recently, this barn was Orbit Culture’s practice room and HQ. They’ve rehearsed here, recorded here and sometimes crashed here.
“We recorded [2018 EP] Redfog here,” recalls singer and rhythm guitarist Niklas Karlsson. “I didn’t have a driver’s licence and didn’t want to keep going back, so I just slept on the sofa with the rat piss and shit all around me for five nights. My mother would come over with bread and olives to make sure I ate.”
The barn very nearly didn’t make it this far. For the video for their 2023 track From The Inside, the band decided to burn a mannequin. The plan was to lay it on a sheet in their practice room and ignite it.
“I was standing there with a blowtorch, and just before we turned the camera on, I was like, ‘Is this safe?’” says Christopher. “We took it outside, and the second the blowtorch hit the mannequin… POOF! It exploded! This place is an old barn that has some vintage cars above, so it was a close call.”
“We’d have been in debt for life,” adds Niklas.
More than a decade after they formed here in Eksjö in 2013, Orbit Culture have become one of the most exciting bands in metal. Their fusion of kaiju-sized riffs, epic choruses, pummelling melodeath intensity and emotional depth has won them the admiration of members of Machine Head, Slipknot and Trivium, while they delivered festival-stealing sets at Bloodstock in 2022 and 2025’s Download.
But theirs has been a stealth rise rather than an overnight success story – Orbit Culture’s brilliant new album, Death Above Life, is their fifth. And for all of the buzz currently surrounding them, they remain firmly rooted in Eksjö – not for them the bright lights of Gothenburg or Stockholm.
“We are just countryside hillbillies,” confesses Richard. “It’s not common – or even really possible – that people from this area get to do all these crazy things. We always want to make it count.”
Getting to Eksjö from the UK involves going full Planes, Trains And Automobiles. First a flight to Copenhagen, then a train across the Danish/ Swedish border, and finally a lift to the town itself. It’s a picture-postcard place, with colourful wooden buildings lining cobbled streets. It certainly doesn’t look like the sort of environment that would produce a band like Orbit Culture.
“We were hoping it’d be a bit darker today, moreblack metal,” Niklas jokes, as the band – completed by bassist Fredrik Lennartsson – prepare to show Hammer around their hometown. “They ranked the most boring cities in Sweden a few years back, and I think we took first,” the singer adds, ruling out a future job working for the local tourist board.
Orbit Culture have played to crowds bigger than Eksjö’s official population of 9,700. At the start of 2025, they opened for Bullet For My Valentine and Trivium on the Poisoned Ascendancy tour, playing London’s 20,000-capacity O2 Arena. Their acclaimed, main stage-opening performance on the final day of the same year’s Download festival saw the audience swell as the set progressed.
“It definitely puts things into perspective,” says Niklas, as we head to Spelverket, an old community centre near the glistening waters of Hunsnäsen lake. Spelverket was Orbit Culture’s first base, back when the singer and his original bandmates were still teenagers. Though he admits that there were ulterior motives for its use in the beginning.
“It wasn’t really a music thing at first,” he says. “More about getting fucked up.”
"These kinds of rooms are where psychopaths are born."
Richard Hansson
We enter the cosy, multi-floor building. Inside, it’s a proper artistic hub, with practice rooms, dance studios and even a makeshift theatre. Niklas leads us to a small room that he used as a private studio where he’d help record and mix demos for local bands. Upstairs, we step into a padded room where Orbit Culture recorded their first two albums, 2014’s In Medias Res and 2016’s Rasen.
“It’s the same, basically,” Niklas marvels. “I can actually see where, when we got bored, we put the drumsticks in the wall.”
“These kinds of rooms are where psychopaths are born,” deadpans Richard.
Those first two albums were recorded by a different line-up, with only Niklas remaining from Orbit Culture’s original incarnation.
“We had no fucking clue what we were doing when we made In Medias Res,” he admits. “It was just a bunch of songs we thought were cool. The very small group of fans who actually listened to Orbit Culture back then didn’t actually care for In Medias Res at all. They were more into our first EP [2013’s Odyssey]. We were like, ‘Holy shit, what did we do wrong?!’”
Rasen was where their sound started to come into focus. They began adding more melodic parts to their songs, and Niklas started introducing cleaner vocals. Richard and Frederik both joined in 2016, making their debut on 2018’s Redfog EP, while Christopher came onboard in time for their third album, 2020’s Nija.
“Chris immediately brought this energy that really drove us,” says Niklas. “We did all the videos ourselves, even though we didn’t have any experience with filming. Nija was the album that said we could be a headline act someday.”
2023’s Descent raised Orbit Culture’s profile even further. “It produced some of our biggest songs, especially Vultures Of North,” says Niklas.
It certainly got the attention of Century Media, who signed the band for Death Above Life.
“It’s such an important album for us,’ says Niklas of the new record. “We knew we needed to experiment with it too, so we’ve really tried to do something fresh and new.”
The band’s lyrics often deal with topics of mental health, with Niklas admitting that his own struggles with Harm OCD – characterised by intrusive, violent thoughts – have coloured a lot of what he sings about (it’s a subject he’s reluctant to go into today).
Death Above Life contains some of the most personal and emotional songs of the band’s career. Chief among these is the album’s closing track, The Path I Walk, a ballad with echoes of The Black Album-era Metallica.
“The Path I Walk has been with us for a few years,” Niklas says, before admitting that lyrically it was inspired in part by Richard’s father, who took his own life when the guitarist was in sixth grade. “We had to be so careful and respectful, and to create something that could give a bit of hope.”
A short drive out of town, we pull up outside what looks like an old warehouse. For a few years in the 2010s, this was Hijackers, the heart and soul of Eksjö’s small music scene and a popular spot for local kids thanks to the availability of extremely cheap beer. Orbit Culture played their first gig here in 2013, celebrating the release of their debut EP.
Today, it’s derelict inside. Rubble and detritus are strewn across the floor, a bar in the corner is covered in dust. On the opposite side stands a tiny stage.
“It’s so much smaller than I remember!” Niklas says. “I’ve still got footage of our first show. I look like a tiny, pale kid. One of our friends almost broke his neck trying to stagedive.”
“Back in its prime, it was a really cool place,” says Richard. “But because of how cheap the booze was, everybody would get fucking hammered and get into fights.”
“My father had never seen a metal show in his life,” Niklas recalls of the first Orbit Culture gig. “He got really upset when we played because there was a moshpit, so he thought they were fighting. He walked into the middle and grabbed these kids and started throwing them out like he was a bodyguard or something. He didn’t want anybody to get hurt.”
Orbit Culture played just a handful of gigs during their first five years. Shows were hard to come by here in Eksjö, and Gothenburg and Stockholm are both more than 100 miles away. The nearest major city is Linköping, hometown of Ghost’s Tobias Forge. Even that’s a 90-minute drive.
“Playing a show in Linköping felt like you’d gone on tour,” Niklas jokes.
Orbit Culture may have been late bloomers when it came to touring, but they’ve been making up for lost time. Since 2022, they’ve played more than 100 shows in the US alone, and they’re about to embark on their biggest headline tour to date, including a run of UK dates, but it’s the prospect of making their debut at Wacken next summer that makes Niklas puff up with pride.
“We tried to do Wacken Metal Battle in 2019 and lost terribly,” he says, referring to the international battle of the bands contest that gives winning musicians a chance to play the festival. “But now we’re not playing there because we won a competition, we’re playing because they want us there.”
“Every band needs setbacks, so you can come back harder,” Christopher adds, sagely.
Orbit Culture have certainly racked up a few war stories on the road. Such as the time they were almost hit by a bus while drunk in Paris, or their chaotic first US tour, where they were driven from show to show by a fan.
“He was OK, mostly,” Fredrik recalls. “Though he did knock over a few fences and fucked up the bandwagon.”
And then there was the time they almost got the real-life Peaky Blinders treatment while in Birmingham. This was 2022, and Orbit Culture were in the city to play the Slipknot-affiliated new band showcase Pulse Of The Maggots, alongside Heriot and Spiritworld. The band were booked to stay in a pub in one of Birmingham’s less salubrious areas, and trouble started when a gang of men on dirt bikes started harassing them as they unloaded their gear from the van.
“Our merch guy was shaking because he figured we were gonna get knifed or robbed,” Niklas says.
After the gig, the band went back to the pub to find there was a 50th birthday going on.
“Looking around, it felt like there were more criminals than not in there,” says Niklas. “We were like, ‘Holy shit, we need to leave!’”
“We almost got into a bar fight,” says Christopher. “Some guys were swinging pool cues!”
Niklas: “This old guy with all these brutal tattoos started getting aggressive with me. I called our driver to come save us and we ran to his van which still had all our gear. We had to book a new hotel!”
There’s no danger of violence in Puben Eksjö, Orbit Culture’s favourite local bar, which has a booth set aside especially for them. They’re minor hometown heroes around these parts. The band’s logo is on the ice at the town’s ice hockey rink, while Christopher was recently accosted by one visiting German fan, who spotted him walking out of his gym.
“She started chasing my car – ‘Stop! Stop!’” he recalls. “I pull up and she’s like, ‘Aren’t you the drummer from Orbit Culture? Wait here, I’m gonna get my mom so we can have a picture together.’”
But just as much as Orbit Culture are part of Eksjö, so Eksjö is part of them. There are people who have supported the band from the start, such as Rolf, the former owner of this bar, who gave them their first practice space all those years ago. Or the teacher who took Niklas – “a shy kid”, as he puts it – and gave him the confidence to sing in front of a roomful of people.
“I ended up joining a talent show and did the worst Light My Fire by The Doors and somehow won!” says Niklas. He smiles as he looks out of the window and into the town.
“This place really feels like family to us. Why would we want to leave? None of us have that desire to move somewhere bigger. We’re not those kinds of guys. We just trusted that if we made good music, we’d eventually get to where we needed to be.”
“Plus,” Richard adds fondly, “we love this shitty place.”
Death Above Life is out now via Century Media. Orbit Culture play Bloodstock in August.
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