Cold Meat Industry Returns: Cult Swedish Label Resumes Operations
Cold Meat Industry — one of the most important labels in the history of dark ambient and industrial — is unexpectedly returning after more than a decade of silence. The legendary Swedish label has already released three titles, reopening its catalog under the iconic CMI logo.
There are labels that simply release music. And then there are those that eventually become part of the genre itself. Cold Meat Industry belongs firmly to the second category.
Founded by Roger Karmanik in Sweden in 1987, CMI developed its own aesthetic over several decades and effectively defined the sound of a significant part of the European industrial underground. Dark ambient, death industrial, power electronics, noise, neoclassical and gloomy experimental electronics — the music in the CMI catalog was diverse, but it almost always shared one characteristic: it never tried to be comfortable.
Cold Meat Industry released music by Brighter Death Now, Arcana, In Slaughter Natives, Raison d’être, Deutsch Nepal, Desiderii Marginis, Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio, Morthound, Atrium Carceri, Rome and many other projects that are now considered classics of the dark scene. Over time, the abbreviation CMI became practically a quality mark of its own and even a kind of designation for a specific musical aesthetic.
In 2013, the label’s activity came to an end, and in February 2014 Karmanik officially announced the conclusion of Cold Meat Industry’s history. After that, he focused on his own music and other projects, including Brighter Death Now and Familjegraven.
Three releases from the new Cold Meat Industry
ARCANA — Magna Silentia
The central event of the return is Arcana — Magna Silentia. This is the project’s first full-length album since 2012 and, at the same time, Arcana’s return to Cold Meat Industry — the label that released their debut Dark Age of Reason.
Peter Bjärgö and Cecilia Bjärgö have created one of the most personal works in Arcana’s history. What began as an idea for a choral requiem gradually developed into a complete cycle featuring choirs, strings and percussion. The impetus for creating the album was the death of Peter’s daughter, Vendela.
Therefore, Magna Silentia is not simply the return of a cult neoclassical project. It is an album about loss, memory, and the presence of someone who is no longer here. Symbolically, three decades after their debut, Arcana finds itself once again on Cold Meat Industry.
BOMB THE DAYNURSERY — Primitive Perversions 1981–83
The second release takes us even further back into the past — essentially to the genesis of Karmanik’s entire aesthetic.
Primitive Perversions 1981–83 documents the early experiments of Bomb The Daynursery, a project that emerged long before Lille Roger, Brighter Death Now, and Cold Meat Industry itself.
There is no conventional understanding of an “album” here in the traditional sense. It is more than three hours of early tape experimentation: tape loops, cut-ups, radio frequencies, voices, found sounds, and all kinds of manipulation of analog material.
The new CMI-07 is a remastered three-disc CD edition featuring 45 tracks, created from archival recordings dating back to the early 1980s. Essentially, it is a kind of archaeological layer in which you can already hear the beginnings of the sound that would later become Karmanik’s recognizable signature.
BRIGHTER DEATH NOW — Everything Is Gonna Be Alright
The third release brings us back to Karmanik’s main project — Brighter Death Now.
Everything Is Gonna Be Alright is an expanded CD edition of material previously released on a 10-inch release in 2022. Five additional tracks from the same sessions have been added.
The album’s title sounds almost sarcastic against the backdrop of Brighter Death Now’s music: heavy industrial noise, distortion, primitive electronics, and the same gloomy atmosphere that has been an integral part of Karmanik’s aesthetic for many years.
Together with the other two releases, this record forms a rather symbolic picture of the return: the past, the present, and the author’s personal archive have once again been brought together under a single logo.
A New Chapter or the Return of a Legend?
It is still too early to speak of a full-scale revival of Cold Meat Industry on the level of its golden era. It is unknown whether a new wave of releases by other artists will appear, or whether CMI will remain primarily a platform for archival material and projects connected with Karmanik.
But the very fact of the return already matters.
Cold Meat Industry was never simply another independent label. For an entire generation of listeners, its catalog was a kind of map of dark music — music that existed far from the mainstream while at the same time creating its own scene, audience, and aesthetic.
Twelve years after the official end of its history, Cold Meat Industry is releasing music again.
And this time, the CMI logo is once again appearing on new releases.
Perhaps this is only a brief flash. Or perhaps it is the beginning of a new chapter.
In any case, the dark scene has been given a reason to open those old catalogs again — and listen closely.
