(written by Islander)
Let’s be honest, life is mostly a trudge from one mundane thing to another, flowered by moments of happiness, the petals soon enough fallen and stepped on by the need to keep moving — unless your shit is even worse than that and is more like one fall after another that makes you wonder how you keep getting upright, until you can’t.
Let’s be honest, this is also why so many of us search for experiences that banish the mundane, seeking our personal bouncers at life’s barroom door that won’t let the soul-draggers in. The musical banishers come in different shapes and sizes. Some just pump your heart and muscles full of electricity; some fire up your imagination; some give voice to your hurts and hopes.
Krigsgrav do all of that, and have done so for a long time. They do it again on their forthcoming eighth album, the perfectly named Stormcaller. They call it “the best album of our career thus far”, and while every long-running band says that about every new album, this claim is honesty in advertising. We have proof in the song we’re premiering today: “Ghosts“.
Photo Credit: Gabe Alvarez
The introductory portion of this song is a hell of a thing, the kind of overture that freezes a person in place and quickly exiles other thoughts. It combines a fantastically booming, rumbling, and cracking drum progression with dense, heavy-grit slashing and an eerily ringing lead-guitar melody that really seizes attention — because it does sound like the wailing of miserable spirits, lost and needful.
The drums keep rumbling and the bass generates turbulence, but the notes both lengthen in their misery and boil in turmoil. The music scorches and blares in manifestations of ruinous despair; words arrive in mind-lacerating shrieks; the bass vibrantly slugs and the drums vibrantly hammer; there is no relief from the torment, only different manifestations of its painful madness.
Serrated-edge snarls and malignant roars bring different sensations, along with high-flying melodies of bright agony, darting and dancing arpeggios, and waves of glistening sound that are both wondrous and wistful. And we’re just past halfway through.
This being Krigsgrav, they’re not nearly finished turning your mind and moods in somersaults. They continue their elaborate deliverance, reprising episodes from before, widening eyes and throbbing sinews, showing novas of harrowing brilliance within which mandolin-like notes ripple and those mighty drum progressions come down like boulders, and the vocals rip at your jugulars.
If you really want to get caught up by a song and carried away, even if the places it carries you are high points of both pain and fierce triumph, of both haunting confusion and blazing resistance, well you’ve come to the right place.
Or at least that’s how I hear this. Listen for yourselves, and for six minutes banish everything mundane from your life:
This is the second single from Stormcaller. The first one was “Huntress of the Fire Moon” — which includes a guest vocal appearance by Jens Rydén of Thyrfing and formerly Naglfar. Forgive me for repeating what I’ve already written about it… or just skip the verbiage and hit play.
This song combines firestorm riffing with a gale-blown sweep, utterly barbaric vocals, and hammer-strike drums, but the riffing also deliriously spins and miserably swirls and the drums rumble and tumble like boulders, or like war drums readying for attack.
The whole song has an ancient warlike mien, especially when the drums go nuts and the riffing finds a new blazing zenith of glorious violence. Yet it’s not all warlike — the guitars also ring like a manifestation of joyful magic, and seductively sway like a dance among spirits.
And here’s the full quote from the band that I excerpted earlier:
“When we started writing the songs that would make up Stormcaller, our intention was to create the most complete Krigsgrav album that took something from every era of the band, while still pushing our sound forward. A culmination of the blackest hues, doomiest of dirges, and most soaring of lead guitars. We think we achieved that, but we also wrote the best album of our career thus far. We trust that when you hear it, you’ll agree.”
KRIGSGRAV is:
Justin Coleman – Guitar/Harsh Vocals
David Sikora – Drums/Clean Vocals
Wes Radvansky – Bass
Cody Daniels – Lead Guitar
Stormcaller features really eye-catching cover art, and it’s recognizably the work of Adam Burke at Nightjar Illustration. Stormcaller will be released by Willowtip Records on September 19th, on CD, gatefold vinyl LP, and digital formats.
Further Album Credits: Drums were recorded by Sam Paquette at S.A.M. Studios. The album was mixed and mastered by Owe Inborr at Wolfthrone Studios, with additional engineering by Cody Daniels. Album layout and design by Randi Matejowsky.
PRE-ORDER:
https://www.willowtip.com/bands/details/krigsgrav.aspx
https://krigsgrav.bandcamp.com/album/stormcaller
KRIGSGRAV:
https://linktr.ee/Krigsgrav
https://krigsgrav.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/krigsgrav
https://www.instagram.com/krigsgrav_official