Denmark death-doomers Konvent have true oneness to their being: a sound that fits together vertically and a darkness that evens out horizontally. It’s a crushing sound, yet with space. And within this space, each member lays out a vision, a story, a tale of togetherness. They are a band that hit directly.
“We are a very collaborative band, and everyone has a say in everything we do,” bassist Heidi Withington Brink notes.
The evenness that their new record Call Down The Sun, out March 11 via Napalm Records, holds proves this. It’s a remarkably clean emptiness that the quartet layer; a sound like a moon waxing, a river sparkling, ice dreaming. Through the crushing shards of each composition, calm is achieved. Perhaps hope and love is where one’s mind hovers. It may be dark, but the sun is like cubist splinters throughout.
“I definitely think there’s peace for us in the music we create,” Withington Brink explains. “Getting certain things off your chest is always a great starting point for peace. It might not sound like it, but I hope that other people find peace in our music. Maybe something resonates with them, whether it be lyrics, or a certain atmosphere or melody. Whatever other people can use our music for is a gift for us.”
The new record, perhaps hidden behind its simulated bleakness, is really about the sun: a sun that you can feel throughout your icy pains, hitting an isolation as your mind begins to channel strength. Slowly it builds together. As each song forms into another, Call Down The Sun connects the dots, the eternal circle.
“The whole album really evolves around going in circles and being tired of that self-destructive pattern that you want to get out of,” Withington Brink says. “The title is a sort of a metaphor for calling down the wrath of the sun upon something in your life that you’re fed up with. We feel like the sun is a really strong force that both gives life and can take it away, and you can aim for something really high and never get there, and then at some point decide to stop aiming, but just call down the sun to yourself instead.”
Vocalist Rikke Emilie List is the vocalization of that calling. Hovering somewhere completely unique, she splits the instrumentation in two, while still retaining the complete whole, over and under, she dominates, and is never overbearing; floating the extremism like leaves twinkling to the ground.
“Rikke is really inspired by Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation,” Withington Brink says. “She always wanted to sound as low and brutal as he does. We also wanted a more high-pitched blackened scream after making Puritan Masochism, so she started playing with shifts between these two vocals a lot more on this record, which we all love. It just gives another dimension to our songs.”
Konvent are no mystery (they’re the truth), and yet, they’re almost like shape shifters: just as you think you’ve found their groove, like the night wind, you’re inundated with darkness so unreal, it’s always fresh when listening to the new record, always something hidden, something dark.
“We actually thought about the name ‘Kloster’ in Danish at first, which means ‘convent,’” Withington Brink explains about the origins of the band’s name. “But that was taken. So we just translated the name to English instead, and then we liked it with a ‘K’ instead of a ‘C.’ We generally really liked a name that referenced something as mystical as a convent, which holds so many tales and mysteries while being so closed off.”
Watch the video for “Pipe Dreams” here:
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Photo courtesy of Konvent
