Swedish trio Spelljammer are streaming their forthcoming album Ancient of Days in its entirety today via Metal Injection. Hear and share the full album HERE. (Direct Soundcloud HERE.)
Decibel Magazine
recently shared an insightful interview with the Stockholm based trio,
debuting the epic album closing track "Borlung" which is available to hear and share HERE. (Direct Soundcloud HERE.) Brooklyn Vegan previously introduced the album track "The Pathfinder", available to hear and share HERE. (Direct Soundcloud HERE.)
"We like things on a grand scale," says Spelljammer
bassist/vocalist Niklas Olsson. That's a bit of an understatement
considering the Stockholm, Sweden trio's penchant for massive,
slow-burning sludge riffs intercut with dramatic melodic interludes.
There's the pummeling heft of detuned guitars rumbling across the rugged
expanse of unwieldy drums counterbalanced with moments of Master of Reality-era Sabbath's introspective acoustic breaks and Pink Floyd's Meddle-era
psychedelia. These extreme shifts in dynamic give the band's third
album a sense of epic depth unlike most of Spelljammer's peers.
"The
vastness of everything is something that I seem to think about a lot,"
Olsson says, "and I guess that shows in the lyrics." Some of Ancient of Days' words were inspired by the epic poem Aniara by Swedish author and Nobel laureate Harry Martinson
in which a spaceship leaving an uninhabitable Earth is hurtled off
course, sending its thousands of passengers on a steady course in the
wrong direction and there is nothing they can do about it. They will all
slowly die as the ship continues from the solar system, forever into
nothingness. This type of apocalyptic woe permeates throughout the
5-song, 40-minute album in perfect bond with the vastness of the music.
Ancient of Days
is not just the band's third release, but in many ways, a rebirth. It's
Spelljammer's first recording as a trio -- with Olsson taking over bass
duties and new drummer Jonatan Rimsbo battering the skins -- and the
culmination of a progressive move toward a heavier, doom-laden sound,
away from the desert rock leanings of their 2010 debut Inches From the Sun. Vol II saw the band spreading out into darker territories. After writing sessions fell apart in 2013 for a followup to Vol II
(reissued in early 2015 by RidingEasy Records) Olsson and guitarist
Robert Sorling scrapped nearly everything following the departure of
half of the band. The two began to build from the ground up as a duo
with new ideas that resulted in the invigorated Ancient of Days. It's the band's most focused and deliberate in both its complexities and simplicities.
"Having
recorded the previous two albums in a more patchwork kind of way,"
Olsson says, "we were very set on going into one studio and doing the
entire thing." In so doing, they banged it all out over a weekend in
January 2015 at Ingrid Studio in Stockholm, engineered and mixed by
Christoffer Zakrisson. Here, syrupy guitars ooze from the speakers, the
drums sound like they're perched atop a giant barge and howling vocals
float throughout the proceedings. Ancient of Days very effectively embodies the boundless, otherworldly essence of its inspiration.
Ancient of Days will be available everywhere on LP, CD and download on October 2nd, 2015 via RidingEasy Records. Pre-orders are available for LP, CD and download via Bandcamp.
Artist: Spelljammer
Album: Ancient of Days
Label: RidingEasy Records
Release Date: October 2nd, 2015
Album: Ancient of Days
Label: RidingEasy Records
Release Date: October 2nd, 2015
01. Meadow
02. Laelia
03. From Slumber
04. The Pathfinder (STREAM)
05. Borlung (STREAM)
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