Okay, it’s time to confuse people again (at this site we call things like this “Exceptions to the Rule”, but could just as easily classify them as “Seeds of Confusion”).
Vulture Industries are not strangers to these pages, though 18 months have passed since we last featured their music. They dwell in Bergen, Norway, population 270,000, and home to an astonishingly large number of talented metal bands given the city’s modest size. But it’s safe to say that Vulture Industries are unlike any other band from Bergen. In fact, I’m having some trouble thinking of anyone quite like them anywhere else in the world. Today they debuted (via the Pyro site on Norwegian national radio (NRK P3)) a lyric video for the title track to their forthcoming album The Tower, and it proves my point.
The music is a bombastic, theatrical, head-spinning thing. The excellent instrumental part of the music is sort of like a blend of melodic death metal, post-rock, and Broadway show-stopper, spun in an avant-garde centrifuge, and Bjørnar Erevik Nilsen’s mainly clean vocals will take you into the clouds. He sings, “It Soars!”, and his voice soars like you won’t believe. He also assumes a variety of other vocal personae in this allegorical song about the materialism of modern life in the Western world.
As eccentric and borderline-surreal as the song is, I found myself immediately riveted by it — and I do mean immediately, as in, from the first seconds. And the first thing I wanted to do after hearing it was hear it again.
The video is also a visual feast, which features the wonderful artwork of Costin Chioreanu. There is one perhaps unintended bit of humor that comes from the placement of an ad for the album and related merch; you’ll see what I mean. But otherwise, I thought it was quite cool, as lyric videos go.
The Tower was mixed by Herbrand Larsen (ENSLAVED) and mastered by Jens Bogren at Fascination Street Studios. It’s scheduled for release by Season of Mist on October 1 in NorthAm and September 27 everywhere else, and it’s now available for pre-order here.
I’ll shut up now and let you watch and listen to “The Tower”. Comments, as always, are welcome.
https://www.facebook.com/vultureindustries
http://www.season-of-mist.com/bands/vulture-industries
8 Responses to “VULTURE INDUSTRIES: “THE TOWER””
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Gatsby metal, perhaps?
Not to be an asshat or anything, but i think it has way to much clean singing for No Clean Singing. 🙂
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Which is puzzling given how small my mind is.
I had no idea these guys had a new album coming out. That’s good news.
Also, after watching that video, I find that I’m more than a little dizzy. I can only assume that the induction of vertigo is quite intentional.
It might be clean singing, but it is awesome and unique clean singing. A lot of the lyrics are great too.
I didn’t enjoy the second album quite as much as the first, but i have high hopes for this one.
And Bergen might be of modest size for most other countries, but it is in fact the second largest city in Norway. I just moved down here from northern Norway, and was a bit overwhelmed by the amout of people constantly buzzing around!
But i suppose it is a modest population compared to the amount of awesome bands it produces.
Yes, I was thinking about bands per capita. Bergen certainly isn’t a village, but I expected it to be larger in light of how many notable bands are rooted there.
This is awesome. And the lyrics: “debt is inherent and the birthright of the young”. Damn, I’m gonna use that somewhere.
The lyrics are great, and made even greater by the vocal talents. I’m still amazed by how much I enjoy listening to Bjørnar Erevik Nilsen on this song despite the fact that it’s . . . clean. Sort of.