[Cover photo credit to Sanna Bäckström]
Swedish Heavy Metal band Ram will release their new full-length album, titled Against, on October 9th, 2026, through Metal Blade Records. It has been nearly seven years since The Throne Within, an album with “spiritual and metaphysical themes.”
With Against, Ram focuses on the experience of “being pushed beyond reasonable limits and refusing to comply.” The album captures that moment of resistance which the band describes as “that fire of defiance, which ultimately defines its title and message.”
As a precursor to the release, Ram has released lead single, “Ghost Emperor” and an accompanying video.
Vocalist Oscar Carlquist comments:
This is the opener of the album, a straightforward classic heavy metal song and pure RAM. Lyrically, it deals with how our power structures exist to conceal the true rulers, the ones we will never see or know, pulling the strings behind the curtain and controlling us all.
For the Production, Ram reunited with their longtime collaborator Johan Reiven, who had previously worked with the band on Lightbringer (2009). Without their own studio, having sold Black Path Studios, the band recorded at Studio Recordia in Varberg, Sweden.
Carlquist shares:
At first, I wasn’t really comfortable not being in my own domain. But Johan is a far better sound tech than me and he did a wonderful job. We recorded the solos in a cool new way, as we set up two amps, one wet with a lot of effects and one dry with no effects. They were both mic’d up separately and they played into the enormous recording room in Recordia that is 150 square meters, where we placed two room mics (left and right).
The equipment used on Against reflects a classic approach. Sonically, Against was conceived as a return to classic recording philosophies. Drawing inspiration from the early works of Dio, MSG, and Sweet, the goal was “to create an honest and unpolished sound.”
Carlquist adds:
We do not give a fuck about all these new strange subgenres popping up. We try to play heavy metal in its purest form. We try to hang on to the center of that energy, and we are completely uninterested in 99% of the metal scene.
