The Faroe Islands’ death/doom practitioners, Hamferð, are preparing for the upcoming release of their fourth album, Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk. With the full-length set for release on March 22nd through Metal Blade Records, they have recently let loose its latest single, “Hvølja,” with accompanying music video. You can catch it in the article below, and find more about the new record.
Pre-order Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk here.
“I had a big fascination with making stuff rougher, dirtier, and uglier,” says guitarist and producer, Theodor Kapnas. “Musically, it’s all about tension; suspended chords and tense harmonies, always having that feeling of uncertainty. That song is maybe my favorite track on the record, just because it’s so uncompromising. Everything goes to 11.”
“Hvølja” is also the darkest and ugliest song we have written to date,” he continues. “It is a sonic and lyrical representation of the world being violently ripped apart by monstrous currents and consumed by a black sky above.”
When this magisterial sextet’s third album Támsins likam emerged in 2018 – ten years after they first entered a rehearsal space – the emotive opus thrust the mourning-suited band onto the world stage. Six years on, the accumulation of plentiful live experience and interpersonal chemistry has had a profound impact on Hamferð’s extraordinary fourth LP, Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk, feeding into the artisanal sonic vision of Kapnas, best exemplified by penultimate song and latest single, “Hvølja” (Whaleskin); a sluggish sludge crawl with a beautifully disgusting tone.
Concertedly eschewing all the quick-fix trickery of modern recording technology, the band recorded the songs together live in the studio, without a click-track. The result is a resoundingly human album that heaves, swoops, and shifts in elemental style – from passages of glacial post-metallic beauty through sorrowful folky goth cadences, via icy blackened blastbeats to shuddering vistas of extreme doom mastery – with a crackling tight-but-loose interplay recalling the giants of yesteryear.
The narrative concept behind Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk is inspired by the 1915 whaling disaster off the Faroe Island village of Sandvik (home of Hamferð keyboardist Esmar Joensen), when fourteen men died driving whales ashore in the stormy bay. The village population witnessed the tragedy from the seaside.
The sad tale has enabled Hamferð to powerfully bring to life the meaning behind their Faroese name, zeroing in on the traumatic emotional force behind this supernatural phenomenon. “When you see someone in hamferð, you see their apparition,” Kapnas explains. “Mostly it’s wives with husbands at sea, who’ve seen them dripping wet in the doorframe in the middle of the night. Typically, in folklore it’s a warning that something bad will happen, and there are several documented episodes of this happening in Sandvik in 1915. So it’s kind of full circle for us.”
Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk will be released on CD and digital formats as well as vinyl in the following color variants:
Azure Blue Marbled (US/EU)
180g Black (EU)
Sand Beige Marbled (EU – Ltd. 300)
Crystal Clear Blackdust (EU – Ltd. 200)
Watch Hamferð’s previously released video for “Ábær” at this location.
Hamferð:
Jón Aldará – Vocals
Theodor Kapnas – Guitars
Eyðun í Geil Hvannastein – Guitars
Esmar Joensen – Keyboards
Remi Kofoed Johannesen – Drums
Jenus í Trøðini – Bass
Follow Hamferð:
https://www.facebook.com/Hamferd
https://www.instagram.com/hamferdofficial/
https://hamferd.bandcamp.com/