INVSN has released the video for Immer Zu, a track featuring Sara Almgren and Christina Karlsson on lead vocals and acting as a sonic totem for the band’s upcoming LP, ‘The Beautiful Stories‘.
The video, shot in black and white film, is the perfect accompaniment to the song’s angsty theme and pounding rhythm. Frontman Dennis Lyxzén is no stranger to incorporating political themes like feminism into his work, from his days fronting Refused to (international) Noise Conspiracy to INVSN.
Lyxzén has frequently been quoted speaking out about feminism. “We try to do whatever we can and we try to talk about it every night and make people aware of the problem with the patriarchal system,” he stated. “Music for us has always been rooted in the idea of resistance. [It] always worked as a soundtrack to a different kind of life,” Lyxzén spoke of the band.
Explains frontwoman Sara Almgren, “Since we had written a song about what power and especially patriarchal power means to women, we wanted the video to represent that idea. We asked two friends who never done videos before to come up with an idea and a representation of strong women. We wanted the whole process, from idea to finished video, to be an empowering process with only women involved! The guys had to stay at home, and we made a video with women, for women, by women, about what it means to be a woman in this world.”
Immer Zu serves as the opening track for the band’s sophomore album ‘The Beautiful Stories,’ set to be released June 9th via Dine Alone Records.
More about INVSN? Few other bands than INVSN have better conducted the heritage of the now legendary 90’s hardcore scene in Umeå.
Its members have come together from a wide variety of influential Swedish bands. Sara Almgren hails from Masshysteri, Christina Karlsson from Tiger Forest Cat, Anders Stenberg alongside playing with Lykke Li is also a member of Deportees, André Sandström was in DS-13 and Dennis Lyzxén started out in the seminal punk outfit Refused before playing in The (International) Noise Conspiracy with longtime collaborator Almgren.
INVSN has always had a political message, but few other songwriters have the ability to add additional dimensions of existential struggle and soul-searching like Dennis Lyxzén. In our time, when many moral and deeply humanistic values are being challenged by right-wing movements all over the world, INVSN is a necessary outcry from a counter-culture that has far from given up. Their music might be rich in anger, but the belief that a change could be carried out is never far away. Recorded by Adam “Atom” Greenspan (Nick Cave, The Veils) at Svenska Grammofonstudion in Gothenburg, the album, which buzzes with eclecticism, wherein catchy indie rock with pop sensibilities exists alongside industrial electronics. This is post-punk underpinned by repressed anger and frustration serving as a punch in the face of a mendacious society.
Dennis Lyxzén says about ‘The Beautiful Stories,’
“Music is in many ways a young person’s game. That first debut-record. The youthful exuberance and violence. But there are other things that might matter as much. Experience and hard work. Putting in the miles.
The collective effort of this band is beyond anything I’ve witnessed before.
I can’t even begin to fathom the hours we spent record music, playing live and just living this life. Somehow it feels like it lead to this; this glorious piece of music that I have to say is one of the most exciting and experimental and genuine works of art I ever been a part of.
The process of writing and creating is often harder than we would like to admit and it doesn’t really get easier with age. But when the end result comes out as thrilling as this all those hours spent rehearsing and playing, all those hours on the road and all those records that came before, are totally worth it!”
