Photo – Ester Segarra
With mastery and endless dedication to the art of the riff, they cut through 6 new epic tracks, taking in the best of the old school of heavy & extreme metal plus a large dose of doom-laden riffing, & channelling it through the grime of the underground.
Fenriz enthuses “Old star – again we are here with THE RIFFS! A while after our previous ARCTIC THUNDER album it became apparent that we would continue in that same style, BLACK OLD HEAVY METAL with slow thrash, classic doom and slow death metal.
As many have focussed on the 70s sound over the last 20 years, the mix on our new album has ended up being more 80s than ever.
The songs are more metal than ever! Ted’s songs have a lot of black metal in them, faster and slower but also doomier parts and recurring parts. My songs are more linear written, it’s an ancient 80s underground trick, with breaks, all slow heavy or slow thrash, classic doom or slow death.»
He continues; “This is our most 80’s sounding album so far and our most metal one to date with drum sound typical for the 80s USA/German market and damned lyrics, which are all written by me. We feel that OLD STAR is the big brother of ARCTIC THUNDER. More solid and with even better riffs.”
FENRIZ introduces the track “There really isn’t just ONE song that can represent this album, THE HARDSHIP OF THE SCOTS was my song and although we also wanted one of Ted’s songs to preview the album. Ted took one for the team and we chose my song!
His songs are somewhat faster with more black metal in them but still has slow thrash and doom, my song here seems to start with an INVASION OF YOUR PRIVACY RATT-ERA riff or perhaps one from THE ULTIMATE SIN by Ozzy Osbourne but when I had bicycled my guitar from the Bombshelter and sat down on the porch to strum it, the fact is that (as far as I remember) this entire THE HARDSHIP OF THE SCOTS track was done in an hour and I remember texting Ted about it.
Ted had just been around to collect loads of vinyl I was giving to him. Anyway, so, as usual, I didn’t have an elaborate scheme as to what the riffs, where coming from, but like last album’s preview song I can tell you what it sounds like to me. This doesn’t mean I was inspired by what it sounds like, ok?
So riff number two has both normal doom and some evil death/black notes in the second part. Then there’s the break to make the song more linear (old 80s underground trick I used on the last album and this album) and then a riff emerges which I guess I would like to sound like that awesome break riff in an INFERNÖ track called thrash metal dogs of hell. 1:50 out in that track is one of my fave slow thrash metal riffs EVER and it kind of reminds me of first Exodus too.
But my riff kinda went even slower and may remind more of a Celtic Frost tempo. I think it’s a splendid break and riff anyway and suddenly while I was playing my guitar, I came up with this final riff part which is not as primitive as we are used to but rather sounds like some more epic 20-year-old ENSLAVED or something. Anyway, that’s what it sounds like to me NOW but when I was making it, I was just jamming my guitar on the porch after having bicycled it home. SNAKES!!”
“The Hardship Of The Scots” is being launched ahead of the release of OLD STAR to give fans a taster of what’s to come with their highly anticipated new studio album OLD STAR on May 31st on Peaceville.
Pre-order your copy of ‘Old Star‘ here.
Oran O’Beirne
www.overdrive.ie 2019
Photos – Ester Segarra © 2019
