ALFAHANNE: New Album In Progress
Wednesday, 3rd September 2014
Sweden’s self-styled Alfapokalyptic rockers ALFAHANNE, whose debut full-length album was released earlier this year on Dark Essence Records, are back in the studio preparing for their next album. With guest vocalists like Taake’s Hoest, Shining’s Niklas Kvarforth and Helheim’s V’gandr on their debut Alfapokalyps – names that make most fans of extreme metal sit up and take notice – many are wondering what the band will pull out of its bag for its follow up, so guitarist Fredrik Sööberg took time out from working on the new material to give a hint about what to expect.
” ALFAHANNE has never been a band that does things the way others do them. So when it comes to the process of recording a follow up album to Alfapokalypse we do it our way, regardless of expectations. We do not record demos or pre-productions. We just jam the shit out of our equipment until we have a song we feel we can perform properly on an album. Then we record it. As with Alfapokalyps we record the material live and most often it is the first take that ends up on the album. We believe that if we can’t get it right straight away, who are we to call ourselves musicians?
” ALFAHANNE is not about perfection and order. Quite the opposite. We are about emotions and chaos. The process of writing new material is as always quite easy for us. After releasing our first album we had so much inspiration left in us that we just kept going. Always inspired by the darkness that lies within the depth of humanity and the rotten illusion of our society. The songs just pop up like a big middle finger in the face of the world.
“As I write this, August has come to a close and we are about halfway through the recording, which, again as with Alfapokalyps, we are doing on our own, in our own Dödskult Studio, and we will continue the recording process during this fall/winter when we are not busy playing live. We can also reveal that our new album will have guest appearances by vocalists who we find suitable for our particular style of music, which we call Alfapokalyptic rock. As far as the sound is concerned we just have one thing to say: ALFAHANNE is always ALFAHANNE and we will always have our own distinctive sound. One thing we can safely say, however, is that this album will for sure be the best album released since Alfapokalyps.”
ALFAHANNE can claim a lineup of musicians that have been on the black metal scene since the early ’90’s in bands such as Vinterland and early Maze Of Torment, and Pehr Skioldhammer on vocals and guitar, Fredrik Sööberg on guitars, Niklas Åström on drums and Jimmy Wiberg on bass have proved well-able to win over audiences wherever they have played, which includes a series of festival appearances during 2014.
Formed in 2010, Alfahanne’s sound is a high energy mix of black metal, classic rock and punk, a sound that was interesting enough to convince Shining to join the band on the 2013 7″ split “Grym” release, after which, Alfahanne joined the formidable roster of Norway’s Dark Essence Records.
