Hamster

Hater started out steeped in the pristine, melody-driven tradition of Swedish indie pop acts such as the Concretes and Club 8. Yet the quartet never shied away from darker textures inside their hook-laden material, and frontwoman Caroline Landahl proved capable of moving past gentle melancholy into genuine sorrow whenever the material demanded it, a quality already evident on the group’s 2018 debut album Siesta. Following several personnel shifts, the band executed a decisive pivot toward serrated post-punk and weighty shoegaze textures on the 2022 follow-up Sincere.

The lineup at that point consisted of Landahl, who also handled guitar and keyboards, guitarist Måns Leonartsson, bassist Adam Agace, and drummer Lukas Thomasson; every member had previously played in other Malmö groups. Almost immediately after assembling, Hater entered the studio with producer Joakim Lindberg to cut a three-song EP. Swedish imprint PNKSLM issued the EP in July 2016, and by the time it appeared the musicians were already back at work on a full-length with the same producer. That record, You Tried, arrived via PNKSLM in July 2017; shortly afterward the band joined the Radio Dept. on tour. Strong critical response soon attracted the attention of London’s Fire Records, which offered the group a deal.

Hater’s first project for the new label was the four-track EP Red Blinders, released in December 2017. After a headlining European tour, the musicians returned to Studio Sickan on the outskirts of Malmö to begin their second album. Working collectively, they assembled a wider stylistic range that stretched from expansive synth-pop arrangements to lean post-punk ballads. Fire Records put out Siesta in September 2018, and the band embarked on another headline run across Europe and the United Kingdom.

Two founding members departed after the tour: bassist Agace was succeeded by Frederick Rundquist and drummer Thomasson by Rasmus Andersson, both of whom also played in the post-punk revival outfit FEWS. The influx brought fresh momentum, prompting the group to abandon its earlier New Order-inflected bass lines, emphasize louder guitars, and heighten the intensity in Landahl’s vocals. The first public indication of this evolution surfaced with the June 2021 single “Bad Luck.” Roughly a year later Fire issued the complete album Sincere, again produced by Lindberg.