Tehran (fka Nadia Tehran) made a significant entrance onto the Scandinavian scene a few years ago with their hard-hitting, confrontational, and vulnerable expression, as well as their highly captivating concerts. In May, Tehran will perform their first concert in a while and celebrate the release of the new album “Husqvarna” – a doomy, noisy, and angry record that fiercely deals with Tehran’s birthplace, Jönköping.

Behind Tehran is the unruly Irani/Swedish artist formerly known as Nadia Tehran. Tehran now returns to unveil the music of their upcoming visual album “Husqvarna” to be self-released by their own label Inherited Void. Following their groundbreaking debut “Dozakh” in 2019, and touring with Yung Lean, Tehran has removed themselves from the algorithmic glam and Stockholm board-room-tables. The past 5 years they have found themselves in the shadowy creeks of the Copenhagen underground. Here Tehran has been crafting a new artistic identity that is at once forcefully iconic, enigmatic and deeply personal.

As much as the shortened moniker Tehran signals rebirth, the album “Husqvarna” also feels like a (deranged?) extension of how they always channel multitudes of raw emotion with no bullshit as the only convention. Amidst dissonant nu-metal guitars and programmed blast-beats, Tehran’s voice takes center-stage as Swedish, English and Farsi unfolds in screams, growls and tender melodies. With unapologetic sincerity the lyrics deal with themes of grief, depression and addiction. Yet it is from these dark matters that transformation holds no suggestion but an exclamation: of undeniable resistance, faith and transcendence.

“Husqvarna” is also a direct reference to Tehran’s birthplace Jönköping as a historic site of Swedish weapon-production, geopolitical ambivalence, welfare mechanics and migrant alienation. These structuring undercurrents come to the surface in the visual dimension of the album. Each track frames its characters side by side at Jönköping landmarks, industrial domiciles, chaotic nature and orderly institutions. All settings that define Tehran’s path in processing past and present urges to break free from the dull and deceiving confines of Scandinavian ‘hygge’.

On the 31st of May, Tehran will premiere the album live for the very first time at ALICE in Copenhagen with a selected band of local weirdlings, promising nothing but Shakespearian agony and chainsaw catharsis.

ALICE at Stairway
While the concert hall at Nørre Allé 7 is undergoing renovation, ALICE is located at the music venue Stairway in Vanløse.