I’m always a sucker for a conversation about music, with people I just met and some of my teenage musical heroes! So when my editor asked me to go to the new THE SLAYERKING album pre-listening my response was imminent! An afternoon with Efthimis Karadimas (Vocals-Bass THE SLAYERKING, NIGHTFALL), his bandmates in Slayerking, Marcus Jidell (AVATARIUM and producer of SLAYERKING) and a whole bunch of guys discussing about music.Well this got dreamy!!
As I arrived early (usual for me) in Soundflakes Studios, I went down the living room to wait for about an hour. Fortunately, the wait wasn’t boring at all, as I found a couple of people down there, that made my day even better. Well after an interesting dive to our musical childhood loves, the time had come to go up in the studio.
The gathering was already ongoing, with the proper introductions taking place and a beer “appearing” in my hand. After an hour of conversation about all kinds of things, and some very interesting topics like Leif Edling’ s health, the debut album of THE DOOMSDAY KINGDOM and the new AVATARIUM album (all in Marcus’ words) the time had come to listen three songs of THE SLAYERKING’ s new album yet untitled. Those three songs that Marcus managed to bring to a proper listening level, as the band was still recording the album, at that moment.
The first song named “Bless Those Who Weep And Sell Their Tears To Unbelievers”, is a straight forward song introducing some different and unique clean vocals of Efthimis and a much more raw and physical sound from the band.
Next was “Umbra, Penumbra, and Antumbra – Evil Eye” a song, with more twisted changes and with the progressive element, quite noticeable.
On the third one “Queen of Sheba Undresses Before Pulsating Chords” we heard a song mixing doom and progressive metal but with a huge and raw sound.
What is certain, is that the band is making an album more focused and more heavy than the debut one. The sound, brings back a more analog feeling, alongside a very interesting mixing of doom and 60’s – 70’s progressive rock. Thematically, the lyrics are based from irony religion matters (BlessThose…) to mythical stories (Queen of Sheba…).
The album is going to be released next year, but the exact dates are still unknown to the band. One thing’s for certain, they are taking their time doing their best. These were their exact words. Be patient cause THE SLAYERKING are working on something really great!