Autodafeh
Greed
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It’s been a solid decade since we’ve had a new LP from Swedish EBM purveyors Autodafeh, a time period where the neo-old school body music movement they were loosely affiliated with has largely dissipated from the broader dark alternative club consciousness. Known in their heyday for their various allusions to mid-period Front 242 (the most notable of which was the wink-nudge chorus of their single “Divided We Fall”), their 2025 comeback record Greed has many of those same markers, and some of the associated issues that come with their brand of fealty to the greats.
That’s a roundabout way of saying that Autodafeh haven’t changed super significantly during their hiatus. That’s not a bad thing necessarily, as there’s generally a lot less retro-EBM going around than in the early 2010s, allowing these songs to standout more easily. There’s more than a few fine examples of Autodafeh plying their trade, such as mid-tempo nodder “Find Myself”, which works a steady groove and peppers in portentous samples of men speaking seriously and calls to prayer, all glued together with a simple FM bassline and a brassy synth lead. “Tame Your Body” goes a similar route, adding in plenty of extra percussion and synthlines that mirror the bassline to allow vocalist Mika’s spot-on DeMeyer-isms to shine.
That said, Autodafeh’s homages to legendary acts and songs have always been one of the things that makes or breaks them with listeners; either you’re cool with them paying tribute to the classics, or you find they veer too far into crass imitation. This was less of an issue a decade and half back when all their peers were competing to take the gold in the Muscle n’ Hate Olympics (indeed, their allegiance to 242 was even a little refreshing in a sea of Nitzer soundalikes), but it sticks out a bit more now than it did then. The bassline to “Shame On You” is half “No Shuffle” and half “Lightning Man”, similar enough to each to raise a few eyebrows, while the halting, slightly pitched delivery of the vocals on single “One Step Forward” brings “The Bog” to mind once you notice their similarities. This can often lead to playing a game of spot-the-reference that distracts from the listening experience, with things like the title track’s interpolation of the hook from The Invincible Limit’s “Push” eclipsing all other aspects of its composition.
This is of course one of those ear-of-the-beholder situations, and one never gets the impression Autodafeh are trying to pull a fast one. Indeed, they’re a band whose best moments have always been in service to the EBM gods, and it can be fun to hear them weave some further afield sounds into their tapestry, such as the minimal electro beep-boops of “Backstabber” and the Juno Reactor-esque 32 bit racing game rush of “Under the Blood Red Sky”. Greed does what Autodafeh has always done, and it’d be weird to expect anything else.
