AN NCS PREMIERE: ROGGA JOHANSSON — “AT MOUNTAIN GARPE”

 

As always, no one will stop you if you decide to scroll down to the bottom of this page immediately and start playing the song by Rogga Johansson that we’re premiering, but if you do that I hope you’ll still come back up here to the top and continue reading. If you don’t, you’ll miss an interesting story, and as a further inducement, I’ll tease you with the name Demiurg.

That band was an honest-to-god death metal super-group (and by using the past tense I don’t mean to suggest they are defunct, because that would be unduly pessimistic). The line-up included Rogga Johansson as guitarist and vocalist, Dan Swanö as lead guitarist and keyboardist, Ed Warby on drums and vocals, Johan Berglund on bass, and vocalist Marjan Welman from the Dutch goth metal band Autumn.

They released three conceptually related albums beginning with 2007’s Breath of the Demiurg. The last one was 2010’s Slakthus Gamleby. As I learned when I devoted one of our Rearview Mirror posts to a stupendous song from that album earlier this year, Gamleby is the second largest locality situated in Västervik Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden, and is Rogga Johansson’s home, and “Slakthus” is Swedish for “slaughterhouse”.

 

 

Slakthus Gamleby is a fantastic album, and since it was blossoming in my head again when I wrote that earlier post, I ended my write-up this way:

“Okay, now please follow these directions: Bake a birthday cake for yourself; stick the appropriate number of candles in it (or if you’re in the vicinity of my age, just put one in there for symbolic purposes); wish for a new Demiurg album; and then blow out the candle(s). Thank you.”

We don’t yet have a new Demiurg album, but all of your candle wishes haven’t gone completed unheeded, because we are about to get an album that bears a very close connection to the Demiurg legacy, and the name of the album is Garpedans, by Rogga Johansson and friends. And here I will steep aside and let Mr. Johansson tell the tale in his own words:

After the release of DEMIURG´s Slakthus Gamleby there followed work on a possible follow-up album, to be named Garpedans.

The concept was completed as well as guitars and bass, but after a while it was obvious that DEMIURG was maybe put to a very long ice-ridden sleep through the ages to come.

However, the material remained, and after some contemplation vocals was also finished and alternate musicians were found for drums and lead guitars, to complete the material into its intended form.

So this album is what was to be the follow up album to DEMIURG´s Slakthus Gamleby. It dint turn out that way, and it sounds very much unlike it would have done, if it was a DEMIURG album. Nonetheless, most parts of it are the same as it would have been, so it’s a document in musical form of what would conceptually happen, but with its own twist, as always.

Garpedans lyrically and conceptually weighs heavy into the folklore of Gamleby, and the main character is the giant Garpe, as well as the mountain he became. Garpedans.

Even without being a DEMIURG album, this is a part of the concept started on the first album, so listen to it, and put it into context, and hopefully you will enjoy the expanded concept as well as the music itself.

Rogga Johansson, 17/2/2017, Gamleby

So there, I wasn’t joking: That was an interesting story, wasn’t it?

 

 

This new album, unearthed and now completed, will be released by Chaos Records, and today we bring you the first of its 9 tracks, “At Mountain Garpe“.

There is much doom in the song’s opening; it oozes misery like a thick oil. And with that dismal introduction, the song comes to vibrant life, with a pulsating, vibrating riff that courses with grim energy and a pummeling drum rhythm that sends the blood rushing. Oh, but the song becomes seductive, too, with a chorus that’s as sinuous (and sorrowful) as the verses are jolting. The truly massive head-hammering is still yet to come, laced with a fuzzed-out, doom-kindred lead that worms its way to the bitter end.

 

I don’t know about you, but from where I sit, “At Mountain Garpe” makes me want to dive headlong into the rest of Garpedans.

Here’s the full track list for the album:

1. At mountain garpe
2. A seal has been broken
3. The thrower of boulders
4. Under unknown skies
5. Turned into stone (But not forgotten)
6. Garpedans
7. Where it feasts
8. A tool of great pain
9. Mordbrand

The album was recorded at The Rotpit and it was mixed by B. Helgetun at Studio Brainjar and mastered by Jonny Pettersson. All music and lyrics are by Rogga Johansson, and the cover artwork is by Roberto Toderico (Graveyard After Graveyard, Sinister, Soulburn, etc.). The album design is credited to Silere Omnia.

To pre-order the album, visit this location:

http://www.chaos-records.com/product/rogga-johansson-se-garpedans-cd/