Xavier is talking about meat. Specifically, he is telling me about a time, recently, in London, when he invited a butcher to where he was staying and together they carved and cooked expensive cuts of beef. He talks in detail about the knives, the marbling of the flesh, the smell of the grilled meat, the taste. He tells me that the restaurant we are going to is one of the best spots for steak in Stockholm. "The menu is steak from different parts of the world," he enthuses.

Justice are in Stockholm for one of a small number of surprise DJ sets they are playing in Europe this fall in the lead up to releasing their third album , Woman . It's been five years since they released their sophomore album, Audio, Video, Disco, and perhaps more notably, nine years since they rolled out their unruly debut album, †, which threw the gothic fuzz of heavy metal into a blender with the lustrous shimmer of disco. Alongside a few choice remixes for other artists, the record set them atop the empire of MP3-sharing musicians and bedroom remixers that some critics remember as " blog house ." Their raucous sound breathed fresh life into the Parisian electronic music; where Daft Punk were a dance act with rock fans and Phoenix were a rock band enjoyed by club kids, Justice were arguably the first electronic act to behave like a rock act—applying a newfound exuberance to French touch ten years after its 1990s heyday. In 2016, the resolute mischief that characterized their arrival never feels far away.

We're in the back of a taxi, cutting through the black, wet streets of the Swedish capital. I'm sandwiched between the two halves of Justice , Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé; between the three of us, there are a lot of limbs and not much legroom. I consider the best way of phrasing my response. "I'm a vegetarian," I tell him. Gaspard smirks.

Both Xavier and Gaspard are cool, deliberately so. They both dress like American high-school students—Xavier in a beat-up leather jacket masking a series of faded black tattoos, Gaspard in a varsity bomber, and both in scuffed trainers. When Xavier speaks, he usually starts by pulling his long silken fringe away from his eyes, before launching into often lengthy, always thoughtful monologues. Gaspard, on the other hand, barely speaks at all, and when he does, it's with a blunt, laconic wit, answering your question in about three words. It's rare that either of them are without a cigarette, either hanging from their lips or dancing between their fingers. There's an innate closeness about them you can't help but notice. It's not that they're hostile to the outside world; they just seem far more interested in each other.

Inside the restaurant, peach-pink carcasses hang from thick metal hooks in glass cases. It's chic—next to the drying meat, rows upon rows of expensive wine are slotted in racks—but it still feels like a slaughterhouse. The walls are tiled, presumably to make it easier to wipe away the blood. I've been in the company of Justice for about an hour now, but to be honest, I'm still not totally sure if they want me there or not.

Garpard and Xavier met at a party held by mutual friends. They were both in their early twenties and both graphic designers—Xavier still was still in school, while Gaspard, three years older, had already graduated. "In an apartment party there's always a party in the kitchen, and we were at the party in the kitchen," Xavier says. "I remember finding [Gaspard] very anxious. Very fun, but awkward at the same time—until he spat beer on the head of someone passing by."

The food arrives. For me, it means a bowl of artichoke, spinach, and mushroom pasta. For Xavier, Gaspard, and their close-knit ensemble of handlers and friends, this means plates of blood-red steaks—in isolation—each with a flag atop a cocktail stick pressed into its flesh to denote its country of origin. In the center of the table, waiters place bowls of crispy roasted potatoes and broccoli and baskets of fresh, steaming bread. Conversations in French and English bounce across the table as plates are swapped and wine glasses routinely filled. None of this feels ostentatious, though. Instead, there's a feeling of wholesome celebration in the air, like we're feasting on the fruits of the land before the evening's work begins. We might be in Stockholm, but the scene feels very Parisian.

According Xavier and Gaspard, they quickly realized they shared the same "dry" sense of humor, and began to connect over music. "I don't know any twenty-somethings who don't talk about music, or define themselves through music," Xavier explains. "The rest of our friends were more into post-rock, or what they called anti-folk, but we liked pop music and prog rock." As their peers immersed themselves in contemporary indie music, they sequestered away on an island of romance, witchcraft, and maximalism. In Xavier's words, "Listening to Buggles and Camel—that's where we met."

Two weeks later, Gaspard was waiting to meet a woman who happened to be in Xavier's graphic design class, when they bumped into each other again. Their conversation from the party continued as though without break, and before long, Gaspard had forgotten about the friend he'd agreed to meet, and he and Xavier left together.

Gaspard and I embark on a lengthy chat about the soon-to-be American President Elect, Donald Trump, and how his cartoonification in the liberal media is only strengthening his cause. We discuss the state of Europe, and chiefly the potential election of Marine Le Pen, whom Xavier likens to Tiësto: "Just because you don't know anybody who listens to Tiësto, doesn't mean he can't fill stadiums!" Later, I'm surprised to hear the pair enthusing about haggis, which, given my Scottish heritage, is pretty much the only meat product I can speak about with some authority; Xavier claims to love it so much he's been known to take it on tour with him. The meal ends with coffee, and Gaspard and I share a cheese-board. I realize that Justice can actually be quite talkative, but only when they've got something they consider worth saying.

It's no surprise then, that the first piece of music the pair produced as Justice was a rework of a rock song—Simian's "Never Be Alone" —produced for a remix contest. They didn't win, but the track—with its instantly memorable chorus and strutting bass line—did catch the attention of Daft Punk's then-manager Pedro Winter, who signed them to his label Ed Banger Records, and released the song as a single in 2003. With his backing, the anthemic remix, renamed "We Are Your Friends," went on to define a moment in time; as of this writing, it has over five million views on Youtube.

Despite their considerable influence on the genre, Justice arrived at electronic music via an unconventional path. Both grew up in Paris, on a diet of 1970s prog-rock and 1980s funk—a world removed from the reverence of club culture and its worship of Detroit. As Gaspard explains it, "The era of underground French raves and techno was already over when we started making music." Xavier puts his feelings about rave culture, which peaked in the mid-1990s in France, more bluntly: "Even if it had been contemporary, the idea of going out into the suburbs, to a forest, to listen to techno is one of my worst nightmares."

"No...no," Xavier replies, struggling to speak through his growing laughter. "It wasn't a GIF; it was a flash animation." He finally turns to address me, clearly resigned to the fact they are in the act of fessing up to whatever it is. "We made an animation; we put our heads on the bodies of eagles flying through the city. Actually, one of us was an eagle, and the other one was a kiwi, that little bird without wings." With that final admission, their laughter erupts skyward.

When we discuss the remix and the competition that spawned it, Xavier refers to it as having given the pair "an excuse to make music." When I ask why they needed an excuse, they insist it would have been too awkward to sit around and jam for no reason. That Justice needed a brief to start making music is emblematic of how they talk about their work throughout my time with them—of the methodical, meticulous quality of their approach. Listening to them speak, it can sometimes feel as though everything about Justice, from the length of Gaspard's moustache to the order of tracks on the album, is part of some giant design project. "To me it's definitely a band, but one with a different base to a normal band," Xavier says. The pair tell me they made, and wore, Justice t-shirts and badges before they made any music.

By contrast with the rapidfire ascent many artists enjoy in 2016, Justice's initial popularity relied on slowly multiplying pockets of appreciation, provided by a then far-more cloistered and unhurried web, giving them the time to evolve their band on their own terms. "We had time to develop very normally between our first single and our first album," Xavier recalls, tracing the four years between "We Are Your Friends" and †. "We had no idea what would happen. I didn't think we would go back to other things, but equally we didn't think Justice would last particularly long." Both tell me that support for their second major track—2006's "Waters of Nazareth" —from Phantasy labelhead Erol Alkan, who remixed it, and Glaswegian selectors Optimo, who played it regularly in sets—boosted their confidence in the aggressive distortion that would ultimately characterise †. Even Pedro Winter apparently disliked the track the first time he heard it, though he would later vehemently deny this accusation when Xavier and Gaspard mention it to me in front of him.

Whatever they call it, most people of a certain age will have a ballpark idea of where they were when they first heard †—or at least how it made them feel. If you haven't done it in a while, take this opportunity to listen to the album opener, "Genesis" . The operatic pomposity of the build up, collapsing into that irresistible, gooey bassline—even now, it's a totally alluring, if completely ludicrous, proposition. The album blended the gaudy maximalism of hair-metal with the streetwise hustle of g-funk. From the schoolyard euphoria of "D.A.N.C.E" to the electro-horror of "Stress" , this was the sound of three decades-worth of pop, rock, disco and rap colliding—and it hit, hard.

Usually referred to as "cross," the idea to title the record with a symbol came from a chance encounter with a copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon on a friend's mantelpiece in Toronto. "We thought, ah, that's a great album cover—how cool would it be to have a simple symbol you could put on the cover so you don't have to put anything else?" Xavier remembers. The duo discussed this idea for three weeks, before realizing that they already had just that, in the shape of a crucifix they'd been using as a recurring visual motif in their performances. "Actually the first album doesn't have a title," Xavier tells me. "People call it Cross but it doesn't have a title."

For the teenagers of 2007, Justice did more than just make it cool for indie kids to listen to dance music. They—along with the Ed Banger family, and a few peripheral acts like Soulwax and Tiga —re-energized both worlds, equipping guitar bands with new musical possibilities, and opening a floundering European rave scene up to new, younger audiences. From the cut and paste, polaroid-camera aesthetic pioneered by Xavier and Gaspard's friend and collaborator So Me, to the proliferation of MP3 blogs and remixes, Justice were at the forefront of a revolution centered around Ed Banger—one that hinged on a logic of musical hybridity, and in doing so located the common ground between Franz Ferdinand and Diplo, the stadium and the club. A decade after the release of Daft Punk's Homework and Air's Moon Safari, Paris—thanks to Justice—was once again the center of the electronic universe.

As such, they didn't always receive a warm welcome. "Sometimes people would throw stuff at us when we would play rock songs, or when we would change the tempo too much," Xavier remembers. And while many dance-music purists saw Justice as inauthentic, their reception in the showboating realm of EDM was no more encouraging. Xavier tells me about the time the duo played Tomorrowland in Brazil. "We were playing to a 6000, maybe 8000- capacity tent, and we cleared it in less than two minutes," he says, sounding still sort of exasperated by it. "I'm not kidding. After two minutes, there were only four people left."

After †, the pair seemed to stretch the definition of electronic music even further. Their second album—2011's Audio, Video, Disco—saw them pursue what they describe to me as an attempt to combine dance music with "the black magic of Led Zeppelin," led by the apocalyptic imagery of lead single "Civilization" . Accordingly, their now-infamous tour movie, A Cross the Universe , comfortably positioned them as hell-raisers, tearing through America in a blur of booze, sex, and violence (in one apparently genuine incident, Xavier notably assaults a stalker with a glass bottle). Far from playing the faceless, benevolent role of the selector, Justice were rock stars.

Onstage, Justice select records with a calm authority. Moving from Hudson Mohawke's "Ryderz" to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"—via at least 15 minutes of gabber—the set feels like a frantic overdose of nearly every one of their pop-culture fascinations. Yet it's when they drop their own material that Xavier and Gaspard are at their most powerful. As they unleash the angelic "Safe and Sound" —a collaboration featuring strings from the London Contemporary Orchestra, taken from the new album—the room pauses in a moment of stunned, hands-aloft prayer. And, if only for a second, we take off completely.

Fortunately for Justice, this is not the case in Stockholm. Outside Under Bron—a strange, bespoke club-space nestled under an open motorväg (motorway)—clubbers shudder in the midnight cold, still hoping they'll be let in. Inside, the room can't be more than 1000 in capacity, but it's teeming. The lighting is minimal, the floor lacquered in mud and beer, and the air is thick with the sort of rich, smoggy sweat that can only come from the contained anticipation and urgent dancing of teenagers about to see their favorite band.

I step down into the street and check my emails for a phone number. Looking up for a second, the flush of embarrassment hits me. I've been knocking on the wrong door. A meter from where I've been standing, I see the sign, in small but shocking-pink letters against frosted glass: Ed Banger Records . A lock clicks and out comes the label's owner, Pedro Winter. He's tall and dressed all in black, with round glasses, long straight hair, and a manner that seems somehow both curt and welcoming. I apologize for my lateness, and he invites me in. I spare a brief thought for whichever one of his neighbors I've just spent the past 20 minutes harassing.

Two weeks later, and I'm in Paris' 18th Arrondissement. It's just before midday on a Monday, around the time of year when Autumn descends into the thick mulch of an oncoming winter. Many of the city's shops are still closed and the streets are mostly silent, punctuated by the occasional zip of a passing moped and the distant screech and clatter of a school playground. That, and the sound of my finger repeatedly hammering the unanswered buzzer of a white Montmartre apartment block.

Pedro invites me to take a seat, but before we begin talking, his phone rings. "It's Xavier—do you mind?" He withdraws to a nearby window, giving me time to take in my surroundings. The Ed Banger office could be an art gallery if the shelves were organized a little better. The walls are white, which only serves to accentuate the dazzling array of vinyl, tapes, CDs, books, and skateboards in piles around the room—Pedro later refers to his personal vision of "a record label run like a skate brand." It's the gathered ephemera of Ed Banger's lifespan, and as such every item appears suitably boyish and colorful, reflective of the clean-yet-playful aesthetic the label has brought to the electronic landscape.

Just don't call that aesthetic "blog house."

"I never use that word," Pedro tells me firmly, now off the phone and seated behind his desk. "I remember and obviously understand the blog effect, but I don't think it's a nice word. I prefer 'heavy metal disco.'Which is who we are."

"They are not techno-heads. They are more concerned with Toto and Prince and the Beach Boys. They play records to make girls dance."—Pedro Winter

Pedro founded Ed Banger in 2003, as a subdivision of his publishing company Headbangers Entertainment, which he'd set up the previous year. By that point in his career, he was already a linchpin of the French club scene. When the first wave of house music hit Paris in the 1990s, Pedro began DJing at legendary nightclub Le Palace, after earning the approval of its manager at the time, David Guetta. In 1996, while recording their debut album, Daft Punk asked Pedro to become their manager, effectively igniting the next chapter of his career, as a music executive and taste-maker. Looking back over his CV and Ed Banger's discography, he seems to have had a hand in just about every significant moment in French club culture since the mid-1990s, from helming legendary club night Respect at Parisian nightclub Queen with DJ Jerome Viger-Kohle, to clearing the Daft Punk sample on Kanye West's "Stronger".