"Hunger is what keeps you alive": How nerve damage and burnout led Linnéa Olsson to embrace vulnerability and anger with Maggot Heart

In late 2022, Maggot Heart singer/guitarist Linnéa Olsson underwent emergency surgery on her neck to decompress a nerve, a few weeks before the band were due to record their third album, Hunger. When she woke up, she couldn’t feel her fingers on her left hand, or even lift a glass of water.

“I was worried that was going to be permanent,” she says. “I was in hospital for 10 days and then began a recovery process that is still ongoing. I still have numbness in my hand and arm and shoulder where the nerve goes, but I have regained sensation in the fingers I use for playing and most of the strength.”

In the months before the operation, unexplained neck, arm and hand pain had been keeping her up at night, her motivation for Maggot Heart dwindling as she questioned whether she was making the correct life choices.

“Living with a mystery pain for almost a full year does something to you mentally,” she continues. “That year we also got back into touring properly after Covid and it was pretty rough. I was slowly burning out. This overpowering hunger to reach something, go somewhere, up until then had served me well. Now it seemed like I was running on fumes. When the cards seem to be stacked against you in that way, you’re forced to ask the question: ‘Am I doing this right?’”

The driving force behind Maggot Heart, Linnéa previously played in The Oath and Grave Pleasures, and started the band as a solo project in 2016, with bassist Olivia Airey and drummer Uno Bruniusson joining in 2017. With its unique blend of gritty post-punk, swaggering rock’n’roll and even a brass band, Hunger feels like a statement of defiance.

“Hunger is what keeps you alive. The hunter hunts for hunger, but the prey also hungers for survival,” says Linnéa. “I think Hunger is my most exposed and vulnerable work to date. That shows up in a number of ways, anger being one of them.”

You can feel that anger on tracks such as Looking Back At You and The Shadow, which touch on the experiences of living in a patriarchal society. “It’s dangerous to be a woman,” Linnéa says. “We’re being murdered, assaulted, harassed, oppressed. And constantly perceived, looked at, on the terms of the voyeur. This systemic oppression has to be torn down, but one cannot dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools, to paraphrase one inspiration [late US writer/civil rights activist Audre Lorde].”

But Linnéa also likes to have fun. Opening song Scandinavian Hunger (Linnéa is Swedish, but moved to Berlin 11 years ago) is a playful nod to Norwegian black metal band Darkthrone’s classic 1994 album, Transilvanian Hunger.

“I have a ton of lyrical references to other band’s songs on Maggot Heart albums,” she says. “The whole concept of plagiarism is fascinating to me, because there is a real skill in stealing something while still pushing it forward.

Hunger is out now via Svart.

Hannah May Kilroy has been writing about music professionally for over a decade, covering everything from extreme metal to country. She was deputy editor at Prog magazine for over five years, and previously worked on the editorial teams at Terrorizer and Kerrang!. She currently works as the production editor for The Art Newspaper, and also writes for the Guardian, Classic Rock and Metal Hammer.