Probably Smug.

Recently I had a chance to check out the recently released album “Skogskvad” from Galar. It reminded me of the first few times I listened to Ulver’s “Bergtatt”. However, this album is not only solid for the similarities and influences it has, but is able to stand on its own thanks to some rather unique aspects. Slagmark (Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Programming) took some time out of his day to answer some questions for me.

Is there much story behind the previous band “7 Inches” and how it came to be what is now Galar?

7 Inches and Galar are two completely different bands. I used to play in 7 Inches together with Fornjot about six or seven years ago. The musical style back then was influenced by ska and punk rock. Later I got more and more interested in metal and decided to form Galar.

Please tell me about musical influences… not only for the album you all recently recorded, but even just in general.

I believe there are many bands which inspires me to make music. I usually get very inspired, and get an urge to make music when listening to good music myself. Good bands which I like to listen to right now are for example Solefald, Borknagar, Ensiferum, Vreid, Susperia, Windir and a many many more.

As you can understand I personally find much inspiration in metal and am influenced by several bands in this genre. Fornjot (Clean vocals, Keyboards, Grand piano and Bassoon) on the other hand doesn’t really listen that much to metal. He is more of a classical music kind of guy. He is actually studying music, and bassoon is his main instrument.

Having different backgrounds is also something we have tried to exploit when it comes to the song writing because we believe that this will make the songs even better.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band where a member has been credited only the lyrics writing. Can you tell me how Smaug came into place and why lyrics are his duty?

Ha-ha… You don’t see something like this very often, that’s for sure, even though Immortal has something of the same with Demonaz writing all their lyrics. Smaug is a childhood friend of mine and we like all the same music. He also has a lot of knowledge on the subject we base our lyrics on, which is the Viking era. Therefore the choice to include him in the band and to put him in charge of the lyrics was an easy one to make.

Robert Høyem has done a great job with both your website and album artwork, do you plan to work with him in future projects?

I have always been of the opinion that the cover artwork and layout is of great importance. I very often look at the cover artwork when I go searching for new bands which I’ve never heard of. Therefore I wanted the cover artwork to be perfect! Robert (www.attheends.com) did a great job, and I think it turned out just the way I wanted it to be!! After he made such an amazing front cover and great layout for the album, I also asked him to redo our website. Something which he did, and that also turned out amazing! He is also a great guy to work with so we will most definitely work with him on future projects!

Have you guys had any promising drummers try out to take Tordenskrall’s place?

Drummers are actually kind of hard to find here in Bergen where I live. There are some good drummers here, but they all play in good and established bands! But we have one guy on our shortlist which we are going to try out sometime next month, so we will have to wait and see what happens.

What is the song you like best from ‘Skogskvad’?

That’s a hard question. It really depends, but I am really satisfied with Hugin and Munin.

Obviously the drums are programmed, but what are the biggest improvements you see between the Demo and ‘Skogskvad’?

As you said the drums on the demo were programmed, so to use a real drummer on the album was the biggest improvement. The vocals have also improved a lot since the demo, especially the grim vocals. Least but not last, the production is also a lot better than on the demo.

Do you have any intentions of performing live in the future?

We would very much like to perform live, but this really depends on whether we manage to get a solid live line-up together or not. We are currently working on it, and hopefully we will have something sorted out soon!

Any last words for the readers?

I would like to take this opportunity to say that I hope that as many of you as possible who read this will check out our band and new album at www.galar.no. The album is available for sale through our website!

I would also say a big thanks to you for taking the time to do this interview!
Cheers,

Slagmark

You can hear clips from Galar’s album “Skogskvad” on their Myspace page at www.myspace.com/galarmetal

If someone approached me a year ago and told me to imagine what “Sludge Black Metal” would sound like… I would have had no idea. A year later… Summoning’s “Oath Bound” is released and here I sit, after at least 25 listens to this album, still absolutely stumped about how I am going to go about writing up a review for this record.

I’ll start by briefly talking about why I love metal, and see if this can’t help.

Metal to me, is so much fun, because so much of it is very cartoonish and silly. I’m by no means a Satanist, and my religious “beliefs” probably fall more on the Atheist/Agnostic side. That said, I really don’t care what a lot of these bands sing about, write about, or burn down. That’s their prerogative. As long as I get great music out of the deal… by all means let them do what they need to do or wear what they need to wear in order to accomplish this.

Many of these bands are VERY over the top in whatever theme they write about, whether it’s about epic battles, Viking lore, Satanic rituals, or even Spacemen. But the over the top aspect of it is half the fun for me. Like turning on Saturday morning cartoons, I can sink myself into some other world and come out of it in a good mood. The sometimes goofy corpse paint, bandoleers, swords, and all that nonsense just add to the fun sometimes. Metal, in a way, has become a parody of it’s self, and I’m completely okay with that because that’s partly why I fell in love with it in the first place.

Summoning, somehow, is not one of these bands. How they are so far beyond “over the top” or much more awesome because of there themes and lyrical content is beyond me. But they really are. I really think it just has to come down to artistic direction and integrity.

Oath Bound is a completely different monster from anything else I had ever heard before in my life. Before Oath Bound, I was VERY unfamiliar with most of Summoning’s work, so needless to say the plodding war drumming styles that flow throughout this entire disc (seventy nine minutes in length) was most definitely a surprise to me. I’ll even admit, I was a bit hesitant at this concept at first because I’m so used to insanely fast tempos, blast beats, and the like. But the perfection that these war drums pound into the listener’s ears is just the tip of the ice berg when it comes to how well done this album is.

Lyrically, from what a friend of mine and I deduced, this album might be about the Dead Men of Dunharrow. Each song from beginning to end seems to tell the tale from when they were told by Isildur that they would not find rest or peace until they fulfilled their oath, until many years later when they did.

What Summoning does so well with this, which I believe is their finest album to date, is use repetition and simplicity to form perfection. The songs are not too long, nor are they too short. Flowing in and out of simple guitar riffs using flutes, chanting melodic vocals, harsh vocals and of course the aforementioned war drumming. It is known by many at this point, but track 3, “Mirdautas vras” is also written lyrically and sang in the Black Speech of Mordor. This alone is not only incredibly impressive, but sinks you into the entire atmosphere of the album even more so.

What this album doesn’t have is any type of guitar solo whatsoever. In fact even the guitar structures are as simple as the almost Mother-Goose lyrics. Not to undermine the lyrics however, as the way they are written seems to be yet another nod to Tolkein’s poetry strewn throughout his various works.

This entire album is a journey, from the incredible intro track to the extremely satisfying and rewarding end. While this style of music, or metal, is not for everyone… including metal fans, to me it’s incredibly worth each minute it takes to sit and listen to something of this magnitude. Sitting and listening to this album would be the equality of curling up with a good book and a hot cup of tea. I believe that’s precisely what Summoning intended on doing in the first place.

I thought Cult of Luna’s album Salvation couldn’t be topped. When I got into Salvation, I was convinced for a long time that it was one of the pinnacles of the genre they play. Atmospheric, sludgy progressive… metal. This style is becoming more and more prominent in the metal scene these days, with Neurosis having spear headed it nearly ten years ago, and ISIS taking up the helm later on. Cult of Luna not only is able to keep up on adding their own style to this genre, they are able to perform it admirably.

Somewhere Along The Highway is no different. While it took me several weeks to fully digest, once I got it, I really got it. It sank in deep, like a movie you feel compelled to watch when a specific mood you feel needs to be accentuated. It sank in to my head and body like those rare albums do where it almost feels as if it is a part of you in some inexplicable way. As if you possibly could create something similar in another time and place.

This album is a very lonely album, portraying a mood of ‘Saudade’ thanks to the spacious soundscapes of exactly what the title hints at. While it is not without plenty of dense riffs, plodding bass and its share of screaming, it always manages to leave plenty of beautiful open air between moments of pure chaos. The two “bridge” sections in the song “Thirtyfour” has probably one of the most addicting and infectious percussion beats I’ve ever heard. Intertwined with this beat are very subtle vocals ringing out a melody which bring the two chaotic parts these bridge sections separate back together flawlessly.

The building crescendo on “Dim” is fairly reminiscent of a track from their previous album entitled “Waiting For You”. What seems to start out mellow builds and compounds atop of its self until the momentum of the song is so dense, the only option for it ultimately is to come to a crashing end. Not only is this arguably the climax of the album, but if it isn’t, it sets up the scope for the last few minutes of the album.

The use of synthesizer not only in this album, but by this band is so crucial to their overall atmosphere and the moods they attempt to convey. It tends to subtly layer a melody underneath several chugging guitars, which may even be mistaken for guitar its self. But on the biggest crescendos, it seems almost necessary.

However the synthesizer is not the only instrument responsible for some of the sounds in this album that almost sometimes go un-noticed. Other subtleties you may notice are that of the cabaça, samples of rhythmic hand clapping, tambourine, ebow and various uses of guitar feedback.

Probably what is the most mechanical track of the album would be the second one, “Finland”. When I use the word mechanic, I would refer to this song as one that sounds almost like a steam engine pounding away at its pistons, giving the necessary momentum to get an album of this magnitude off the ground. While the first track “Marching to the Heartbeats” does the task of introducing the album, it gives more of a foundational feeling for the shape of things to come. However, until track two a new listener may not really know what they’re knee deep in, for the remaining hour.

Melancholic and beautiful, this album paints a lonely and abandoned feeling which is unlike any other I’ve felt from an album. It sinks in with every swell of guitar distortion, cymbal crash, or agonized wail of vocals. With this album, Cult of Luna proves to me that they’re on top of their game, and only getting better with age.

Lonely, expansive, no end in site. This is what it feels like to be somewhere along the highway.

The fun thing about Metal is that we all have our guilty pleasures. I guess this could be said about music in general, but it seems to be more true with Metal than anything else. Perhaps it is because many of us are very particular about what we love and hate about it, and many of the fans opinions and loyalties that side with certain bands often are easily perturbed by the slightest things.

With this album, for myself at least, it’s as if many of my favorite guilty pleasures game together and decided to make an album. Guilty pleasures being my root love for Gothenburg style melodic death / thrash guitars. Growly vocals with the occasional melodic verse sung clean with over production, or copious amounts of double bass thumping and tom fills behind the drum kit. While this album isn’t amazing by any means, it’s very easy to rock to without feeling like I’m being insulted by its formulaic simplicity or traditional song writing. I’m generally a sucker for long, progressive songs at heart, and this album has anything but that, and that’s okay.

Influences range from bands such as The Crown, Pantera, and Lamb of God to Soilwork, Dark Tranquillity, and of course In Flames. While the Gothenburg melodies are certainly there, this album actually is quite a bit more chunkier, and not bogged down with overly catchy hooks (I’m looking at you, Lamb of God), or filled with a large amount of melodic bridges and dueling guitar solos (I’m looking at you, In Flames). The nice blend of chunkiness this album offers among the rest of the assorted variety of styles is able to help this album distance its self quite a bit from being lumped into a generic copy cat of any of the aforementioned bands.

Our young vocalist has himself quite a range as well, which is actually one of my favorite parts about this album. Low guttural screams which almost hit a tone that could be filed under “Grind”, but wild ranges flying above that as well, keeping things interesting. In this style of Metal, it can be really frustrating for me when the vocalist has only one dimension of screams/growls, and I can find myself growing quickly annoyed by them. However this album defies that rather admirably. On top of that the clean singing, with what seems to have a little help from Pro Tools, can be a nice breath of fresh air for various choruses, although they aren’t strewn into each song predictably.

One of the other things I enjoy about this album is that the production value has a few nice surprises in store for the listener. One that I find notably awesome is how the end of track 4, “Deathride to Escape” fades out in somewhat of a muffled tone. It’s done very simply and tastefully, but accentuates the song quite nicely. With Metal, I generally prefer the “dirty” or even “4-track” sound of production. It almost always adds to the overall atmosphere or “grimness” of an album, if you will. With this album, the pristine production actually seems to help it along in a way. While it isn’t horribly over produced like Dissection’s last album, or the past few In Flames efforts, one can tell with some objective listening that the production and final mastering of this album was carefully picked over. Each instrument is mixed in perfectly, nothing too loud, and not much of it lost in the chaos. If I could change one thing about the production, I would have made the cymbals and crashes a bit louder, but that’s about it.

All in all, this album is a good listen. By no means ground breaking or astoundingly different or experimental however. It was never meant to be, and I’m quite okay with that. Just good to put on and ignore, or to rock to a few times. I’ll definitely look forward to Submission’s next release, hoping they might be able to branch out from their roots and take the talent they have and run with it.

It’s a shame that this EP is less than half an hour long. But, when listening to it on repeat for hours, it almost feels right that it shouldn’t be any longer. The experience is extremely well done in its delivery, and any longer or shorter might have changed that feeling. However, should Alcest release a full length album in the future, I’m certain that its length will also suffice to satisfy the listener’s experience as well.

This is like nothing I’ve ever heard before in black metal. It certainly still carries much of the traditional musical styles of black metal such as the atmospheric production, blast beats, tremolo picking, and harsh, wailing screams. However underneath the surface it feels much more than that.

The first track alone defies black metal traditions in so many ways, I don’t know if I’ve even noticed them all yet. The most prominent one being the vocals, which are clean female almost speaking vocals. Very down cast and melancholic, however when surrounded by the melodic chaos of the music, it almost sounds joyful. The lyrics translate to something that really feels neither, but more of a general observation of peaceful surroundings. All this alone, is not necessarily innovative, however the juxtaposition of the vocals with the music is one of those rare and wonderful moments where I just can’t help but realize that black metal is probably far from dead, or boring.

The second track uses words from a Charles Baudelaire poem. Musically and lyrically this track is almost celebratory. The melodies that the lead guitar weave throughout the entire song are incredibly beautiful. They seem to give wings to the typical agonized wailing vocals in the black metal style. However, instead of feeling agonized, the vocals seem to rise above everything else and intensify the beautiful things around us. As the closing riffs fade out of track 2, my brain craves more, and I will continue to listen to this on repeat for a very long time.

The chaotic and dense wall of noise that black metal produces can also be one of the most beautiful styles of music, and this EP exudes that from beginning to end.

“Beyond the vast sorrows and all the vexations
That weigh upon our lives and obscure our vision
Happy is he who can with his vigorous wing
Soar up towards those fields luminous and serene”