Axwell Says a Swedish House Mafia Reunion Will Not Happen Anytime Soon
In a recent interview with In The Mix, Axwell said that he doesn’t think a Swedish House Mafia reunion will happen any time soon. Read the interview below:
“No, I don’t think so. It’s hard to say, but that’s how it is now – I mean, we just stopped. I haven’t really started to miss Swedish House Mafia yet, because it’s only been so short. But I’m sure if I had stopped everything then I think I’d be pretty devastated.
it’s been cool [going solo] – before we used to have four really stressful careers going on at the same time, and now it’s a little bit more relaxed. You actually have the time to catch up on yourself, whereas before we were just running after Swedish House Mafia, trying to please Swedish House Mafia.”
It’s worth remembering just how massive the split actually was for the scene. Swedish House Mafia – Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso – had spent years as arguably the biggest act in dance music, headlining festivals around the world and packing arenas on their “One Last Tour” before officially calling it quits at Ultra Music Festival in March 2013. So when Axwell sat down with In The Mix just a few months later, fans were still very much in mourning, and comments like these were the closest thing to closure a lot of them were going to get.
What’s notable reading this interview now is how measured and honest Axwell actually sounds about it. He’s not slamming the door shut out of bitterness – he’s describing the very normal relief of stepping out of a demanding, all-consuming project and getting some of his life back. Each member went on to keep himself plenty busy: Axwell teamed up with Sebastian Ingrosso to form Axwell Λ Ingrosso not long after this interview, while Steve Angello pursued his own solo career and label ventures. So even without the Mafia name on the marquee, none of the three exactly disappeared.
A later update, for context: despite what Axwell said here in 2013, a reunion eventually did happen – just on a much longer timeline than anyone was expecting back then. Axwell Λ Ingrosso first teased the idea of getting the band back together in May 2018, an official reunion was confirmed not long after, and Swedish House Mafia’s full “Save The World” reunion tour launched with a show at Stockholm’s Tele2 Arena in May 2019. None of that makes Axwell’s comments here inaccurate for the time – this was an honest, in-the-moment answer from an artist who genuinely didn’t know what the future held, and for years it held up as the accurate read on where things stood. It’s just a good reminder that in this industry, “not anytime soon” and “never” are two very different things.
