Fearlessly experimental, deliciously irreverent and defiantly unclassifiable for 25 years, Stockholm’s Gösta Berlings Saga unleash ‘Forever Now’, their highly anticipated 7th studio album. A masterful collision of intricate songwriting, raw rock spontaneity and their signature disregard for genre limitations, ‘Forever Now’ rests on no laurels; it’s a driving continuation of a journey that suggests, even after two decades and counting, the band’s best work may still be ahead of them. Founded in the suburb of Vällingby, Stockholm, the Saga began in 2000 with a creative spark keenly felt between keyboardist David Lundberg and drummer Alexander Skepp. Taking formative inspiration from the ‘60s jazz fusion improvisations of fellow Swedes Hansson & Karlsson, Gösta Berlings Saga broadened their sonic palette with the addition of bassist Gabriel Tapper and guitarist Mathias Danielsson before the release of their debut album Tid Är Ljud in 2006. Danielsson subsequently left the project to be replaced by Einar Baldursson, contributing to the darker and more complex sound of 2009’s Detta Har Hänt, 2011’s Glue Works and 2016’s Sersophane. The overt manipulation of sound and melody on this trio of early releases helped set Gösta Berlings Saga apart from the rest of the progressive pack, swerving easy cliché and navel gazing nostalgia in favour of a fervently forward-thinking ethos. Undoubtedly influenced by the greats of prog, art-rock, electronica and the avant-garde, Gösta Berlings Saga have remained thrillingly impervious to categorisation. 2017 saw another evolution within the band as Baldursson left to be replaced with Rasmus Booberg whilst percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Jesper Skarin also joined the ranks. Rejuvenated and revitalised, Gösta Berlings Saga’s subsequent albums, ET EX (2018) and Konkret Music (2020), introduced a whole new audience to the band’s idiosyncratic fearless experimentation, breakneck rock ‘n’ roll infused with even more found sound electronics and sonic obscura. Uncompromising and utterly distinct, these albums solidified the band’s belief that staying true to their own artistic vision was always the only way forward. Forever Now is 10 tracks of hand-crafted chaos that bear all the brilliance of Gösta Berlings Saga’s 25 years of irreverent innovation. Entirely written, recorded, produced and mixed by the band for the very first time, the album sees synthesizers and arpeggiated guitars spiral ever higher, colliding with helter skelter percussion and pulse-racing drums on the way, whilst the band’s innate trust in each other and in their music form the propulsive core of a perpetual energy engine five years in the making. Although not established as a concept album as such, personal tragedies during the early writing process ultimately left their mark. For a time the band tried to separate their collective creativity from the events of their private lives but, rather than grief and darkness making their presence felt, Gösta Berlings Saga instead founded the album on a celebration of memory in the moment, glimpsing small moments of eternity within the music itself as a means of connecting to something bigger. After the surrealist splendour of introductory piece ‘Full Release’, it is lead single ‘Through The Arches’ that sets an effervescent trajectory with a palm-muted Krautrock boogie and a delirious, earworm synth hook that is only a taste of things to come, with the whole groove shifting spontaneously on its axis in the song’s last few seconds. Still determined to push boundaries after two decades, Forever Now’s second single ‘Fragment I’ doesn’t actually appear on the record. Recorded in January 2025 with the ambition of expanding on the ‘now’ in Forever Now, the band spent an explorative afternoon in the studio alongside much admired guest musicians Reine Fiske (Träden, Dungen) on guitar and Gustav Nygren (Kungens Män, Anekdoten) on guitar and saxophone, allowing fragments of music from the album to freely intertwine with ideas and motifs dating back the time before their very first record. Elsewhere, the likes of ‘Ascension’ and epic album closer ‘Ceremonial’ dial down the tempo but bring energy, quirk and intrigue in cosmic abundance; testament to a musical maturity, steadfast creative vision and dynamic command that can only come from years of constant collaboration. After close to 45 hypnotic minutes of majesty and madness, the truncated conclusion of final track ‘Ceremonial’ might seem jarring at first but, when considered as the latest contribution to the inimitable legacy of Gösta Berlings Saga, it becomes instead a pregnant pause for breath before the band inevitably surprise us yet again with groundbreaking ambitions for the next decade and beyond. FOR FANS OF King Crimson, Magma, YES, Focus, Captain Beefheart, This Heat, The Mars Volta, THOT
