Genre: Progressive Metalcore, Djent

Here is the situation you are walking into. Allt Ataraxia is the second album from a Karlskoga five-piece who formed in 2020, signed to Century Media in November 2022, and released a debut in October 2024 that got them nominated for Best Breakthrough Album. Nine tracks. Thirty minutes. Out July 31.

The debut, From the New World, was a concept record about societal collapse built on a fictional post-apocalyptic frame. Ataraxia abandons the fiction entirely. The title is the ancient Greek term for a state of serene freedom from disturbance, and the lyrics draw directly from the band’s own lives: exhaustion, loss, relationships, the search for clarity. Vocalist Robin Malmgren, guitarists Olle Nordström and Viktor Florman, drummer Adam Björk. That is the change. Everything else you need to assess is downstream of it.

What Allt’s Ataraxia Gets Right

Malmgren is the asset. He shifts from animal roar to smooth cleans across single bars, and on “Omertà” he deploys an almost hip-hop delivery over turntable scratches that has no business appearing on a Century Media metalcore record. Whether it works is contested. Boolin Tunes called it a surprising choice that does not quite land. Dead Rhetoric called it a bouncy aural odyssey. Both are watching the same thirty seconds.

“New Day” opens hard and sets a high bar, blending intensity with a discomforting melodic edge. “Enemy” contains a rapid technical passage at its midpoint that is the clearest evidence on the record of what this band can actually play. “Ultraviolence” and “Nevermind” carry the djent-oriented weight, Nordström and Florman alternating between thudding and spiralling figures while Björk hammers mechanised beats underneath. “Snowblind” and closer “Avalon” are the ballads, the latter opening into guitar squalls and sky-bound synths.

The production is the record’s most consistent strength. Out of the Basement described it as sharpest around the edges while maintaining density, with enough room for dynamics to flourish in quieter moments. That is accurate. The hard parts genuinely hit, and the atmospheric passages are not filler between them.

The band’s own framing is worth taking seriously here. Allt means everything in Swedish, and they have described the name as reflecting a refusal to be confined within genre boundaries. That philosophy is visible in the willingness to put turntable scratches next to djent chugging, and in the decision to let “Avalon” close on synths rather than a breakdown. Dead Rhetoric noted that the band lean on no single aspect more than another, allowing the diversity of tools in their wheelhouse to develop individual songs that still work collectively.

The Sophomore Problem, Stated Plainly

Turning inward is the right artistic instinct and it produced a weaker record. That is worth sitting with, because it is not the outcome the framing predicts.

Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life called it a step back from the debut with fewer exciting moments and stretches that sound downright generic, singling out the title track as the worst offender. Boolin Tunes noted that the clean choruses feel crowbarred in, and that the tracks stick steadfastly to well-known modern metalcore structures despite the technical proficiency on display. Blabbermouth was warmer, praising the band’s willingness to pull back and let a melody breathe.

The pattern across all three is the same observation with different verdicts attached. Ataraxia is a competently executed modern metalcore record from a band capable of more, and the personal lyrical turn did not translate into structural risk. From the New World had a fictional frame that forced compositional decisions. Real experience, it turns out, does not impose the same discipline, because life does not have a three-act structure and a record about it can drift toward the default shapes of the genre without anyone noticing.

Thirty minutes is short and the record does not overstay. There is no filler here in the sense of padding. What there is instead is a band that took the harder emotional path and the easier musical one, and the gap between those two decisions is where the album sits.

Buy the album on Bandcamp or listen to the full album below.