Fever arrives three years after Six, an album that wandered through considerably darker, more introspective territory. This time, the Gothenburg miscreants have rediscovered the restorative properties of a dirty riff, a punishing rhythm section and the sort of blues-soaked guitar work that makes you want to grow a moustache, buy a motorcycle and develop an entirely unnecessary opinion about bourbon.
It is, in short, a very good time to be alive. Assuming you can still hear.
The opening track, “Back From The Grave”, announces the album’s intentions with all the subtlety of a brick through a stained-glass window. Thick, Sabbath-sized riffs grind against a muscular rhythm, establishing a sound that is heavy without becoming ponderous and vintage without requiring a museum admission fee.
Graveyard have spent nearly two decades mining the fertile territory between blues, psychedelia and hard rock. The danger, naturally, is that one eventually starts digging in circles. There are only so many ways to rearrange a blues scale before the neighbours complain, and only so many retro-rock bands one can endure before longing for the sweet silence of a power cut.
But Graveyard understand that authenticity isn’t achieved by dressing up like 1972 and refusing to acknowledge the invention of the internet. It’s achieved by making the music feel necessary. “Back From The Grave” has precisely that quality: a live-wire urgency that suggests the band aren’t revisiting their past so much as dragging it into a dark alley and demanding its wallet.
“Tongue Tied” keeps the pressure on, its relentless groove and fuzzed-out guitar attack making a persuasive argument for the continued relevance of plugging instruments into amplifiers and hitting things with sticks. There is no algorithmic cleverness here, no calculated genre-hopping designed to impress a committee of streaming-service executives. Just four musicians doing what they do best, with the confidence of men who have stopped asking permission.
If the opening salvo establishes the mood, “A Better Cut (Note To Self)” provides an opportunity to appreciate the band’s more nuanced side. Slower, bluesier and gloriously rough around the edges, it allows the guitars to breathe without draining the record of its momentum. Graveyard have never been short of muscle; the more interesting trick is knowing when to unclench a fist.
“Year Of The Horse” then arrives at a gallop, propelled by pounding drums and a restless energy that makes its title seem less like a metaphor than an urgent veterinary matter. It is one of the album’s most immediately exhilarating moments, a reminder that Graveyard can still make old-school rock feel dangerous rather than merely familiar.
The real centrepiece, however, may be “A Means To An End”. Built around a stomping, Sabbath-inflected groove, it captures the album’s essential character: heavy, direct and just psychedelic enough to make the furniture appear to be moving. Released as the first single ahead of the album, it makes an excellent case for Graveyard’s decision to return with a more immediate, forceful sound.
Then comes “Time To Tell”, a gloriously unhurried blues-rock workout whose bass-driven pulse gives the song a different kind of authority. Rather than trying to bludgeon the listener into submission, Graveyard settle into the groove and let it do the dirty work.
“Room Tempered” brings the record back to earth with another dose of straightforward, hard-hitting rock, while closer “Dead Note” takes the scenic route. At nearly seven minutes, it gives the band room to stretch out, explore the darker corners of their sound and resist the modern compulsion to wrap everything up before somebody checks their phone.
The album’s nine songs occupy just over 38 minutes. Mercifully, Graveyard have resisted the temptation to produce a bloated double album about the spiritual significance of a broken guitar string. There is a little room for excess, naturally, but this is a band that generally understands the difference between letting a song breathe and leaving it unattended.
One of the most encouraging aspects of Fever is how decisively Graveyard have taken control of their sound. Rather than handing the reins to an outside producer in the hope of receiving a commercially sanitised version of themselves, the band produced the album themselves, with Pelle Gunnerfeldt handling the mix and Robin Schmidt responsible for mastering.
That division of labour suits the material. Gunnerfeldt’s work keeps the sound punchy and immediate, allowing the guitars to snarl and the rhythm section to retain its physical weight without burying everything beneath a fog of distortion. The production doesn’t attempt to make Graveyard sound expensive. It makes them sound dangerous, which is a considerably better use of everyone’s time.
The album also arrives during a period of change. Guitarist Jonatan Larocca Ramm announced his departure in June 2026, leaving Joakim Nilsson as the sole continuously active founding member. That kind of upheaval can turn a band into a particularly unpleasant workplace meeting, with everyone discussing the past while nervously eyeing the future.
Instead, Fever sounds remarkably purposeful. Nilsson’s guitar and vocals remain central, while Truls Mörck’s bass and Oskar Bergenheim’s drums provide the sort of foundation that makes the music feel less like an exercise in nostalgia and more like a working, breathing band. The album doesn’t pretend that change hasn’t happened. It simply refuses to make change the entire bloody story.
Graveyard have made a record for people who still believe a great riff can improve a bad day, that the blues are best served with a little menace, and that rock music needn’t apologise for taking up space. Fever is muscular, melodic, occasionally strange and blessedly unconcerned with being respectable.
Put it on loud. Pour a glass of something irresponsible. Warn the neighbours if you’re feeling unusually considerate.
And if anyone asks whether rock ‘n’ roll is dead, point them toward Fever.
Then turn it up until the question becomes irrelevant.
Donnie’s Rating: 9/10
Fever is out now via Nuclear Blast Records
