Vampire

IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT Deep in a musty, age-old cellar of old town Gothenburg, the anonymous members—the quintet has fashioned a particular nom de guerre—of Vampire are plotting something wicked. They’ve been holed up deep underground for over two years. Here, light fails. But the disquieting darkness is right up Vampire’s alley. Frontman Hand of Doom, guitarist Black String, bassist Command are urging relatively new recruits, guitarist Sepulchral Condor and drummer Abysmal Condor, to stay focused on the biennial ritual. As such, Vampire’s founding members have experienced it before. Wait long enough and the abyss will open, the jaws of darkness gaping yet again for the vernal tides. For neophytes, Vampire’s cob-webbed, moon-burned brand of death metal stems from not just in one circle of Hell but all nine. The Swedes are just as influenced by Mercyful Fate and Slayer as they are informed by Sarcófago and Bathory. Likewise, traces of Autopsy, Master’s Hammer, and, of course, Possessed are evident. But Vampire aren’t an old-school act because revisiting the classics is modish. No, they genuinely feel present-day death metal is lacking spirit, is without presence, and has lost its eccentricity. So, they’ve robbed the aesthetics of Hammer Horror films, absorbed the pneuma their favorite metal bands, imbued it all with nostalgia for mysterious times long past, and have come out on the other side as Vampire. Or, the soundtrack to Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. “That is perhaps not the most obvious reference for how our music actually sounds,” says vocalist Hand of Doom. “But the overall aesthetics of the band is not that far off. Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest was an atmospheric and nostalgic over-the-top reimagining of vintage Gothic tropes, and that’s basically, thematically, where you find Vampire as well. Ancient mystery, dark aspects of European history, moonlit open tombs and faceless figures enshrouded in pungent fog... In all its late ‘80s nocturnal glory, Castlevania II also gels nicely with some of our musical influences of the period. Those were the days!” Vampire didn’t form in 1987, however. The Swedes rose from the proverbial grave in 2011 when Hand of Doom, Black String and Command heard a voice in the dark. They quickly put together their self-titled demo, 2012’s Vampire. Immediately hailed by tastemakers—such as Darkthrone’s Fenriz—and fans, who raided 300 copies of the demo in a week, Vampire’s vicious yet evocative style set fire to convention. Buzzed and then signed by Century Media a year later, the Gothenburgers quickly set out to work on their debut. Released in the abyssal spring of 2014, Vampire’s self-titled debut was heralded by the press as “the real deal”, bestowing “macabre charm”, and “uniquely unhinged”. Vampire’s start was auspicious. So, when they released Cimmerian Shade—a limited edition 10”—in 2015, it was also met with rabidly rave responses. UNDER THE COOL MOONLIGHT Now, the members of Vampire are reveling in the next era of the band. Previous drummer Ratwing has been replaced by drummer Abysmal Condor and guitarist Black String now has a six-string sideman in Sepulchral Condor. A quintet, the Swedes set off to write not just a follow-up to Vampire, but an album that will redefine death metal in 2017. Composed over a two-year timeline, songs like ‘Knights of the Burning Crypt’, ‘Skull Prayer’, and ‘Revenants’ demonstrate a deadlier, more incisive Vampire. The difference between Vampire and most other bands is that they arranged the songs together in the rehearsal room—a tradition sadly waning—instead of one or two members controlling the process. The result is With Primeval Force, nine songs of malefic aggression and ritualistic transmission. “With Primeval Force has a more mature feel to it,” guitarist Black String compares. “As the cover art suggests, the musical and lyrical horizons have broadened; every song feels as if it lives its own life, still well-placed in the general picture. Already when I began writing the first tunes for this album—‘Pyre of the Harvest Queen’ from our 2015 EP was originally supposed to be on it—I wanted the band to go for a more introverted and cold sound, as a distinction to some of the chorus-laden ‘fist in the air’ songs on our debut album. So, you could say that With Primeval Force generally is both colder and more atmospheric than our debut; a bit less ’traditional’ songwriting in Vampire terms. Despite that, the album somehow embraces bits and pieces of the last 35 years or so of metal music. In that sense, it holds on to a lot of tradition and the Vampire mark is still very present.” To test the Cthulhu-infested waters, Vampire released an early preview of rager ‘Skull Prayer’, which was the first song the band crafted with the Condors onboard. Devised at the same time as ‘Night Hunter’, off the Cimmerian Shade 10”, the first song off of With Primeval Force is both a physical and figurative bridge to past and present. But ‘Skull Prayer’ isn’t the only song designed to span Vampire and With Primeval Force. Black String was very aware of needing connective tissue between the two full-lengths. So, the unbridled ‘Ghoul Wind’—with its nod to vintage Teutonic thrash—was also penned to maintain Vampire’s ancestry. As for the rest of With Primeval Force, it demonstrates Vampire’s ingenuity by re-shaping death metal’s classic constructs into new horrific forms. “‘Revenants’ is probably the most varied song of the album,” says Black String. “The intro riff of the song is one of those riffs that I did shortly after our debut album, but I didn’t really know in which context to place it. ‘Time went by, we tried out various arrangements now and then, and 18 months later we had glued the parts together. It was a relief to get the song done, because I knew it would be relatively easy to finish other songs after this one. ”Metamorfosis” and “Midnight Trial”, whose bits and pieces date to a period when the band was quite inactive. In the middle of all this, I wanted to take Vampire in a fresh musical direction. Meanwhile I came up with these riffs which reek of early Slayer, Celtic Frost and even Mercyful Fate. I think these three songs are the most ‘progressive’ on the album, and since they are relatively slow to Vampire standards, they took more effort to complete.” HEAR THE WOLF NOW Recorded over 10 days at Nacksving Studios (Opeth, Dark Tranquillity) with engineer and studio owner Isak Edh, With Primeval Force continues Vampire’s commitment to tracking on vintage gear as well as their professional ear for a good, if truculent sound. The new album was handled in split sessions in 2016. One in May. The other in November. The group also revisited Nacksving later on to lay down additional guitar work, keyboards, and vocals. The entire Nacksving experience turned out to be not just routine but enlightening. “We wanted to try something else for With Primeval Force,” Black String admits. “So, we decided to go for Studio Nacksving, who are actually also known for their long experience and vintage equipment, just like the studio we used for our previous output. But the main reason With Primeval Force sounds different from our debut album is because we’ve become a bit more experienced recording and mixing ourselves. If you don’t know which knobs to adjust, it can be hard to push the studio engineer in the direction you desire.” If With Primeval Force is Vampire’s musical hail to their influences and a statement of their own innovation, then lyrically it’s on another Stygian plane. As Hand of Doom intoned earlier, Vampire are well versed in the hideous yet seductive imagery crafted by H.P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, and M.R. James. As with the music, so too the lyrics. They’ve parlayed Victorian and Romantic visions of the supernatural into their own. “As suggested by the album title and the cover artwork, the lyrics deal with the obscure and the grotesque, with arcane energies and the rise of fallen idols,” Hand of Doom reveals. “Recurring motifs are dark aspects of ancient cultures, violent interventions from beyond the grave and elevating experiences of the supernatural or the divine. Compared to previous Vampire songs, these lyrics draw less influences from, and refer less to, already existing works of art in the same genre.” With savage music and spine-chilling lyrics, Vampire are breaking the seals of seven with With Primeval Force. They are readying for supernal battle. And if the beasts and minions of darkness and the warriors of light don’t collide in planet-shattering might upon its release, then, at the very least, the Swedes have their bags packed to hit the road in support of With Primeval Force. “Let’s say we don’t want to miss great opportunities,” muses Black String. “We will begin the With Primeval Force cycle with a bunch of shows in Scandinavia.” By: Chris Dick 2014 BIOGRAPHY: We have survived the apocalypse but metal hasn’t. This is 2014, a mere three decades since the first roars of “Kill ’Em All”, and all we seem to hear are old and new bands “going back to the roots” while hiding behind the “old-school” tag as if this was some kind of magic armour that would prevent them from any form of criticism. But what separates the men from the boys in this (rotten) business is conviction. And none are more dedicated to the cause than the four individuals behind the name VAMPIRE. Of course, you could give those Swedes the cold shoulder for playing hide and seek with their identities and accuse them of just trying their best pretending it’s 1987 all over again, but that would mean you sorely miss the point. Tossing away any form of categorization, the members of VAMPIRE agree that they have never paid much interest to the classic Stockholm death metal scene from the early 90’s (“too much groove and too little atmosphere”), but are the first to underline that their musical roots rather stem from the second wave of black metal that swept Scandinavia in the early to mid 90’s. This is probably where their unusual, graveyard-like, and at times almost gothic atmosphere comes from – and that is gothic in the way you would have it in the Hammer horror movies from the 60’s. All of this made sense upon the release of the band’s first and only demo in 2012, a year after initially forming. Recorded as a three-piece, those first three songs immediately made a stir in the underground solely on word-of-mouth basis and without actual promotion. The 300 tapes sold out in less than a week, despite the fact that the band had yet to play a single gig or answer any interviews. Being hailed by Fenriz from DARKTHRONE on his Band of the Week blog only added fuel to the fire, and when the same recording was re-issued on a now highly-collectable 7”, not even the accidental manufacturing mistake of a double edition of 500 copies each could meet the immediate demand. By then, the band had already played their debut show in Copenhagen and a dozen have followed since, including one in London at the LIVE EVIL festival and one with the mighty REPULSION in Oslo, where Hand of Doom was invited by the gore masters to perform BATHORY’s “The Reaper” on stage. In the meantime, the band never stopped writing new songs and by the time it was officially announced that they had signed to CENTURY MEDIA, their first album was already in the can. Self-titled and containing ten tracks (two of them being re-recorded versions of songs from the demo), their debut full-length was recorded last September and October in an old-fashioned, analogue studio owned by pop musicians who had rarely dealt with metal before. This gave VAMPIRE access not only to a crisp and warm sound, but also to tons of vintage equipment (including an accordion, a vibraphone and a Fender Rhodes). To keep it all spontaneous, the recording process was on purpose a quick affair with the basic tracks being put down to tape in only three days, while additional recordings were completed at their own rehearsal place on a portable studio christened Seven Gates Studios, as a tribute to one of their most obvious influences. The result is 666% VAMPIRE, with a music style out of this world and out of time that combines a variety of lyrical themes all meddling with the dark and the unknown, drawing inspiration from contemporary horror literature and the filthiest video nasties alike. No gimmick, no trend, no side-project: VAMPIRE is the real deal; an enigmatic circle of metal heads that live in a dimension of their own. And this is just the beginning… By: Olivier Zoltar Badin Order "With Primeval Force": http://smarturl.it/VampireWPF www.vampireofficial.com http://vampiretheband.bandcamp.com