(written by Islander)

Few long-gone bands from the underground still have as passionately devoted a following as the Swedish group Lifelover. Two of that band’s surviving members have worked together under the name Ritualmord to create a debut album that will be released tomorrow by Unjoy – Art & Ritualia. That pedigree alone would attract Lifelover fans to the album like iron filings to a magnet, but almost like a rebuff of an old lover, Ritualmord named their album This Is Not Lifelover.

And the album’s name is mostly true, but not entirely true. It isn’t Lifelover, but to use a cliché, there are some Lifelover nucleotides in Ritualmord‘s DNA — though indeed it’s true that the other ingredients of their musical polymer are quite different from what a Lifelover fan would expect and possibly hope for — though it may reflect where Lifelover would have gone (to more vast and mind-bending places), had it lived.

In lieu of typical PR promotional texts, the two people behind the album, ( ) (Kim Carlsson) and 1853 (Johan Gabrielson) have crafted a different kind of introduction, and we ought to begin there in presenting today’s album premiere: Continue reading »