The Janitors’ new album, ‘An Error Has Occurred,’ released via Rocket Recordings is a raw exploration of angst, anger, and resilience in a world that feels increasingly unstable.

This unsettling theme runs through the album’s powerful soundscapes, where haunting melodies and heavy rhythms evoke a sense of dystopian rebellion. Celebrating over twenty years of their musical journey, the Swedish psych-rock band presents a recording deeply influenced by themes of heartbreak, loss, and the bleak condition of the world. For The Janitors, these contrasting elements are perpetually intertwined: “The personal is political, and the political is personal.”

“Thanks to the failure of modern technology for the title”

Can you tell us about the inspiration behind the title of your latest album, ‘An Error Has Occurred’?

Henric Herlenius: Jonas, our singer, had some problems years back trying to connect technical devices, and the message “An error has occurred” kept coming up. His wife picked up on that, and it’s been a saying in their family ever since. He suggested it as a potential title for the album, and it pretty much sums up the themes and feelings we had around it. So, thanks to the failure of modern technology for the title.

<a href="https://thejanitors.bandcamp.com/album/an-error-has-occurred">An Error Has Occurred by The Janitors</a>

How does this album differ from your previous work, both musically and thematically?

First of all, it’s the first time since ‘First Sign of Delirium’ that we recorded the whole album live. We ventured up to Omnivox Studios in Dalarna for a weekend. It’s an old converted missionary church that we could basically roam free in and record all through the day and night. Previous albums have been a process of layering, sampling, and “building” the track from scratch. But with this, we wanted to leave the studio with everything recorded and done. It’s all live, except for vocals that we overdubbed at a studio in Stockholm. Jonas’s son also added some additional drums and guitar on ‘In A Bliss.’

We started writing this record in 2019 and were supposed to head into the studio to record, but then COVID hit, and ‘The Noisolation Sessions’ happened. From time to time, we wrote songs that had more of an ‘An Error Has Occurred’ feel to them rather than ‘Noisolation,’ so the shelf that held the embryos of the coming album grew bigger and bigger.

Thematically, it is a continuation of what we started with ‘Evil Doings of An Evil Kind’ EP. But this time, we dug a bit deeper into our own personal backyards. It’s a reflection of who we are, both personally and politically, and more now than ever, with the state of the world, those two intertwine on all levels of life.

So, basically, it’s about loss. Personal loss and the loss of solidarity. And anger. We’re still angry. But also older and tired.

The songs on Side A of the album are described as having the menace of Melvins, the swagger of The Stooges, and the cosmic heft of The Heads. How did you achieve this blend of influences, and what were you aiming to convey with these tracks?

If we could muster up 10% of the swagger of The Stooges, we would probably be the biggest band from Sweden. The Stooges fucking rule. But jokes aside, as mentioned above, we wrote a shitload of songs, so we had a lot to choose from. When we ended up with the seven songs that make up the album, we found that they all had a sense of urgency. But it’s always about simple things with us—a hook, a riff, or a melody that we get caught by. Then it’s often a battle between me and Jonas to decide what songs are going to end up on the album. But these songs really are an entity. They all have a raison d’être on the album.

‘In A Bliss’ is highlighted as the album’s radiant centerpiece. Could you delve into the inspiration behind this track and its significance within the album’s narrative?

Rocket refers to it as the centerpiece, and this is why we enjoy working with Rocket. They have been involved in the process of making the album what it is. They challenged us in the production, mixing, artwork, and all. When you have to motivate your choices, it forces you to articulate the creative decisions and sometimes change them.

‘In A Bliss’ is a love song. I don’t know if we have ever actually written a love song. It’s been an unwritten rule in The Janitors that those songs don’t see the light of day. We used to have a studio in an old bomb shelter, and a running joke was that in case of the apocalypse, we would still be making music down there even if bombs were going off. But then we got evicted due to all bomb shelters being renovated in Sweden after the Russian foreign minister Lavrov said that WW3 might be around the corner. So the song is basically about finding a new safe place with a safe person and then going out together in a bliss. It almost didn’t make the cut for the album, but Rocket insisted. And looking at our track record of success, we figured we should maybe listen to the ones working with music.

The centerpiece in our minds would be ‘Operator.’ When working on the demo for that song, we found a strange, menacing groove that reminded us of ‘Mezzanine’ by Massive Attack. That really started something for us. It gave us an idea of how the soundscape for the album would be. Not that we ever thought about rapping, but more about letting the bass, drums, and groove have a more vivid place. That, accompanied by a more 70s live feel to the whole production, was the starting point for us before heading into the studio. This is probably the first time that we had a really clear view of what we wanted the end result of an album to be.

The album features a mix of straightforward poppier pieces and more dronier numbers. How did you approach the balance between these contrasting styles while maintaining cohesion throughout the album?

We are two songwriters, so the duality is really in the foundation of what we do. At one point, it was one part trying to trash the pop parts and the other trying to pop up the awkward shit of the other. But after the ‘Noisolation Sessions,’ we felt like we reached some sort of finish line with noise and drone. We decided that on this album, we would not trash the melodies and definitely let the vocals stand out and not be buried deep within the sounds. Fortunately, we are both very much aligned in our beliefs and political stance, so the duality is more personal from our point of view and dependent on what we have encountered for ourselves and together.

Could you discuss the decision to record the album live over two days and nights in a converted missionary church? How did this environment contribute to the overall sound?

It wasn’t really a decision. We won the studio time in a weird contest, and when we contacted Ola, the owner, it turned out he was a fan of The Janitors. We got to talking and really hit it off. Since we only had a limited amount of time, we really needed to make the most of it. So that’s why we rehearsed more than we’ve ever done and really tried to formulate our intentions with each and every song before we went into the studio.

We had a rigorous schedule. We got up at 9 every morning regardless of when we went to bed. Omnivox has bunk beds on the second floor, so we basically recorded until we fell asleep. So, we had three days and two nights of very active work. And that does something to the creative process. The final track, ‘Farewell Space Girl,’ is a good example of that. We all changed instruments; Jonas and Anders grabbed clarinets and birch horns, and we went to town doing something completely different. The original demo of that song is something of a simple two-chord hymn.

“We have been exploring these themes since a couple of records back”

Your music often explores themes of frustration, anger, and societal critique. How do these themes manifest in ‘An Error Has Occurred,’ and what message do you hope listeners take away from the album?

It’s always up to the listener to interpret the lyrics. But this time, we decided that we would treat the vocals as vocals and not as an instrument, letting them have a more forward position in the songs.

The themes are still the same: a reflection of the decline of societal boundaries at a pace that scares us. Boundaries have been pushed so far forward that we don’t even raise our eyebrows at things that, a couple of years back, would have caused an outrage. We have been exploring these themes since a couple of records back. With every record, we have also let these themes reflect who we are as persons and our own experiences.

How did the creative process behind this album help you navigate these challenges, both personally and artistically?

I can only speak for myself, but The Janitors is probably one of the main reasons I haven’t gone insane. To have the grace to be able to share a creative and ideological universe, and to produce noise and art out of that context, is a blessing. We’ve been doing this together for 20+ years, so it’s basically in our DNA at this point. The fact that everything is basically fucked now was the main catalyst for us to move inward and address personal issues. I’m constantly reminded of what purpose art serves—that it carries stories. Either the ones depicted by the artists or the ones manufactured by the viewer/listener. But it’s those stories that will survive after the inevitable collapse, and we hope that some stories will be the ones we started chanting.

So what’s next for you now?

We just came back from a mini-tour of the UK to celebrate the new album, so now the Janitors are going into vacation mode. But we’re planning to release an EP in the autumn with versions of a song plus two songs that didn’t make the cut for the album. And a live in-studio video! After having our heads blown off by The Gluts in London, we’re hoping to do a few gigs with them. Plus, some gigs with fellow fuzzy Swedes Domkraft in Scandinavia. Eventually, we’ll start writing again.

Fuzz love from the Janitors.

Klemen Breznikar

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