There is a particular kind of band that sounds like the nineties never ended — The Prodigy's menace, Tricky's fog, JPEGMAFIA's confrontational wit — but somehow arrives as the freshest thing on European stages in years. Deki Alem are that band. Their debut album Forget In Mass landed in August 2025 without fanfare and hit harder than anything that came with a marketing budget.
Twin Architecture
Sammy and Johnny Boakye Bennett are twin brothers, Swedish-Ghanaian, raised in Gothenburg, rooted in Stockholm's underground. The name Deki Alem does not explain itself. That is part of the point. Operating as a four-piece with producers Richard Zastenker and Johannes Klahr, they function as a unit rather than a brand — guerrilla campaigns, DIY visuals, cryptic CDs scattered across Stockholm with song names scribbled on them. In an age of content calendars and release strategies, they scatter breadcrumbs and let the music do the rest.
The Sound of Controlled Combustion
"Fun" is the entry point. The lead single — premiered on BBC Radio 6 Music by Nick Grimshaw and Emily Pilbeam independently — rides twisted breakbeats under shadowy vocal delivery. It sounds like a rave flyer that has been left in the rain and partially dissolved into noise. Urgent, propulsive, delivered with a punk edge that does not telegraph its punches. The fact that two different BBC presenters championed it without coordination tells you something about the song's reach: it works on the dancefloor and in the headphones simultaneously.
The album builds from there. Eight tracks of genre-obliteration: drum and bass chassis, trip-hop atmosphere, rap cadence, post-punk velocity. "Shadowman" — their most-streamed track at over four million plays — carries a weight that belies its danceability. "Stray Dog," premiered again on BBC 6 Music with a music video shot in Romania, pushes further into dissonance without losing the groove.
The Receipts
Clash Magazine gave Forget In Mass a nine out of ten. Billboard placed it on their R&B/Hip-Hop Fresh Picks alongside Kehlani and Rakim. The vinyl sold through Rough Trade globally. Spotify's editorial machine picked it up across Pollen, Housewerk, and Fresh Finds in multiple markets. Anthony Fantano covered them. Wonderland, Dazed, and Notion all ran features.
But the real validation is live. Glastonbury's Shangri-La stage does not lie — Deki Alem played two sets there in 2025. They closed the final day at Way Out West. They sold out Berghain. They opened for Gorillaz in Amsterdam, London, and Paris after their debut EP Among Heads earned a Swedish Grammy nomination.
The Trajectory That Matters
The next chapter is being written now. We Love Green in Paris awaits on June 7. Swedish House Mafia support slots in Gothenburg are confirmed for August. New music is promised before summer. They are headlining across Europe through 2026 with sold-out dates stacking.
What makes Deki Alem matter is that they have not chosen between art and energy. The music is genuinely strange and genuinely danceable. The Swedish Grammy nomination came when they were still a cult. Forget In Mass is the moment the cult becomes a crowd — and the crowd, somehow, has not diluted the intensity. They have outgrown the underground without leaving it behind. That is the rarest trick in music.
