TREAT TRIVIA
Trivia
The 2017 Tokyo show was Treat's first headline concert in Japan in twenty-seven years, counting from their first visit in 1990. BARKS reported that near the end of the main set, "Get You on the Run" began not with the intro the band had used on its previous Japanese visit and on its live DVD, but with the one from Organized Crime. The members had chosen it on the reasoning that Japanese fans would prefer that version, and by their own account the response was better than last time. The crowd's singing on the chorus visibly surprised the five men on stage.
The Wild Card, issued by Frontiers Music on 21 November 2025, is Treat's tenth studio album and the fifth they have made since reforming in 2006. Anders Wikström says he set out to write a record that would serve as a musical timeline for the band's whole career, with every song carrying that intent musically and lyrically. It is the first Treat album with an actual story timeline built into it — subtle, but there — running from the early 1980s up to now. The idea had already been in his head for the preceding album, The Endgame; this is where he finished it.
Of "1985", the third song on The Wild Card, the band said that the timeline continues and that with this track they wanted to capture what they had gone through as a band in 1985 — a year that changed everything for them, with the spirit of the song telling the whole story. 1985 is the year Treat made their debut with Scratch and Bite. The album's first single had been "Adam & Evil"; "1985" followed it, released with a music video.
Treat made their debut in 1985 and had four albums behind them by the time they first played Japan in 1990. In a 2017 piece tracing the band's history, BARKS wrote that after that visit Treat turned its music toward the grunge sound then in fashion, and that the records which followed lost the audience the band already had. The first break-up was announced not long afterwards.
Treat reformed in 2006, won their standing back with 2010's Coup de Grace — their first album in eighteen years — and then announced a second break-up in 2013. A farewell tour in 2015 brought them to Japan on a three-band Nordic bill with Europe and Crashdïet, and it was after that run that the split was called off. Speaking to BARKS in 2017, Anders Wikström said the band had been at a fork in the road: they had reached their thirtieth year and were playing shows, but had no plans for a new record, and that was one of the reasons they announced the end. Carrying on without making albums is not an option for him, and he is clear that Treat will not become a nostalgia act playing nothing but the old hits.
Treat took the title of Tunguska from the great explosion over Siberia in 1908. Anders Wikström told BARKS in 2018 that the record is not about the historical event as such: he chose the word as a metaphor for a release of energy on the scale of a big bang, and was drawn to how it sounded — thoroughly rock, and the sort of word that could title a film. Pontus Egberg added that it remains an unsolved case that scientists never cracked, and Robert Ernlund said the implications are scattered through the lyrics.
Speaking to BARKS in 2018, Anders Wikström said that the three albums Treat had made since reforming — Coup de Grace, Ghost of Graceland and Tunguska — completed a single concept between them. The idea came from how he listens himself: when he fell for Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple or AC/DC he worked through the whole catalogue rather than one record, and he wanted Treat's three to be taken the same way. He noted that a good many people had read Tunguska on its own as a concept album, and said that while the three could not be forced into one story, there was no question they had come to form one concept.
Asked by BARKS in 2024 where the songs come from, Anders Wikström pointed at the work he did before the band. He spent more than fifteen years as a professional pop songwriter and producer, learned a great deal doing it, and still writes for other artists when he is asked. He would like to say the inspiration comes from daily life, he said, but in truth it comes from there — and he added that the band takes great pride in making good records, which he genuinely believes is why Treat is still taken seriously.
The October 2018 visit brought Treat back to Japan after just one year — the fastest return in the band's history, and it followed a 2017 run that had itself been their first headline shows there in twenty-seven years. Pontus Egberg said they had wanted to come back quickly because the previous visit had been such fun, and Jamie Borger joked that the next one might be in six months. The Shibuya Club QUATTRO show on 4 October opened with "Skies of Mongolia" and closed on "World of Promises" in the encore. Anders Wikström explained that apart from a German festival the day after the album came out, the real touring started in Japan, so the set differed considerably from the one they had brought the year before.
Treat came together in Stockholm, Sweden, in the early 1980s. The material Frontiers Music put out with 2025's The Wild Card introduces a band that made its name early on a sound joining melodic hard rock to AOR, and places it alongside Scandinavian contemporaries such as Europe and Pretty Maids.
The Wild Card, released in 2025, was both produced and mixed by Peter Månsson. In the label's own material Anders Wikström says the band made the album for themselves and for their fans, and that working with Månsson has made them better at what they do. Keeping the same crew is a long-standing habit: back in 2018 Wikström told BARKS that nothing about the team had changed — producer, artwork, video staff alike — and that the compliments the band kept getting on its production were probably down to how good that team was.
Pontus Egberg, who played bass from 2016's Ghost of Graceland onward, is better known for his work with The Poodles and King Diamond. Talking to BARKS in 2017 he explained the connection: The Poodles and Treat had toured Europe together in 2010, and when Treat came to make Ghost of Graceland, Anders Wikström got in touch to ask whether he would play bass. He took the chance immediately. In the same conversation Robert Ernlund laughed that the band's line-up changes always seem to land on the bass chair — "the mystery of this band" — and Wikström answered that he would like this one to be the last.
When Treat returned to the Sweden Rock Festival in June 2024, the bass chair had changed hands again: Pontus Egberg was out and Nalley Påhlsson was back. BARKS reported the swap as having happened since the band's 2018 Japanese shows. The line-up their label names as the current one for 2025's The Wild Card is the same five: Robert Ernlund on vocals, Anders Wikström on guitar, Patrick Appelgren on keyboards, Jamie Borger on drums and Nalley Påhlsson on bass.
When Treat started work on Tunguska in 2017 they already had a European tour on the books. Anders Wikström told BARKS in 2018 that they deliberately postponed that tour to concentrate on making the record, and that the decision turned out very well. Getting an album out two years after Ghost of Graceland, and having the live side in as good a shape as it was, both followed from it.
On 2 May 2023 Treat played Monsters of Rock Cruise 2023 aboard the Mariner of the Seas without Anders Wikström. Magnus of Eclipse, who was on the same bill, covered guitar, and former member Pontus Egberg was back on bass. Their second set the following day was to have been on the open-air pool stage and was rained off; because that was the festival's final day there was nowhere to move it to, so the one performance was all they played on the voyage. BARKS also noted the band chatting after the show with Mats Levén, Treat's former singer, who was on the cruise with Vandenberg.
Treat's appearance at the Sweden Rock Festival on 7 June 2024 was their fifth since reforming in 2006 and their first there in seven years, the last having been in 2017. Anders Wikström pointed out that it is the largest rock festival in the Nordic countries and that the band has nothing but good memories of playing it. The set threaded two songs from The Endgame between the older favourites, with images of the band from each song's era on the backdrop. BARKS noted that the pyro was used generously despite the daylight slot — something particular to this festival.
Midway through the 2017 Japanese show, Treat played a medley marking the thirtieth anniversary of their third album, Dreamhunter. "Tonight's set is something special, made for Japan," the band told the room. Anders Wikström said in the same interview that their Sweden Rock Festival set that summer would also be built around the Dreamhunter anniversary, and that the album was being reissued on vinyl with different sleeve artwork.