#like even if he thought well of eight in particular by comparison he's been stoked up to hate the other garde in general

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

year six of being salty that around halfway through RoS the writers went 'shit we accidentally wrote five way too sympathetic and reasonable, and he is rapidly going through a redemption arc. quick shove in random serial killer shit out of nowhere without explanation, which completely contradicts his character and its development up til then. wait fuck he's redemption arcing EVEN HARDER in FoT. shit shit shit okay just make him hannibal lecter'

#lorien legacies #LL number five #LL crit tag #the crit files #five hurting people is something he consistently has to work himself up toward by turning them into an Object of Hatred #and/or having someone else encourage him to do so #because hurting people /fucks him up/ even when he hates them #and after that has hit its breaking point of emotional intensity he just. stops wanting to hurt them #wants to help them or at least for them to be alright in fact; even when they've treated him horrifically #and when that breaking point results in doing irreversible harm he regrets it SO MUCH #he has to spend a month dissociating and keeping himself busy every waking hour not to break the fuck down over what he did to ethan #and he DOES break the fuck down over killing eight #like even if he thought well of eight in particular by comparison he's been stoked up to hate the other garde in general #which leads pretty quickly to regret and total lack of malice toward the garde after the showdown in florida #he is completely broken over it #even /nine/ he loses 'i want this person hurt' animosity toward after florida. in fact animosity at all that we see after that initial #monologue over eight's body; where he's having his big moment of realizing he has more hatesinking to regret than just hurting eight #and he doesn't say he wants nine to suffer. he just says it wasn't worth helping him because he thinks he'd just throw it away #the only time we see him kill someone and not seem too fucked up about it is when it's a mog soldier who presumably knew what he was #signing up for; and was literally swinging a sword at five's head #five fucks me up because at heart he just does not have real malice in him. if he is feeling it something has gone terribly wrong #not as in ~lol of course it has he's crazy~ but as in 'if you supposedly feel fine but are under so much stress that you're having constant #shakes and heart palpitations that is not your default state of being; you are being bent in half and you're eating yourself' #so them randomly going uhmmm ACTUALLY he's a BLOODTHIRSTY SADISTIC SERIAL KILLER who carves his number into a rando's chest #for no reason; and lets people regenerate rather than kill them so he can savor hacking them apart over and over; and drools over murdering #as many people as he can including two random mog guards that happened to be in him and ella's way is like. fuck off lmao #even if you try to go with him turning the mogs into a hatesink for what they've done he would go into a breakdown spiral as soon as it #resulted in killing someone and actually seeing them suffer. the other exception to this that we see before the character assassination #started was deltoch but i do feel like there's an explanation there; it doesn't feel Jarring; but will have to think about it #anyway five has some great moments in UaO but it's really frustrating trying to pick through the bullshit for Actual Characterization

[doomedandstoned]

SÂVER: Raging At Darkness, Stepping Into Light

~By Billy Goate~

When I heard that former Tombstones members were forming a new band called SÂVER, I knew it was going to be doomy, but I don't think I was prepared for an album of such immense breadth and ferocity. You think Slomatics or Conan can command a hall? Well, let's just say with S VER you're in the Hall of the Mountain King. As I listen, it's not hard to imagine an apocalyptic scenario where the SÂVER's powerful strains break out in the dead of night, echoing through nightmarish forests, over majestic mountains, and into the impenetrable dark of Norway's wild. I can't believe how perfectly this recording captures size, scope, and grandiosity of their sound.

They Came With Sunlight by SÂVER

A deep, quietly percussive bass note opens up "Distant Path" and is joined in short order by menacing reverb of the synth. Two minutes in, the guitar and drums join in the layers of crescendo. At last, Ole Christian Helstad joins the fruckus of this brewing storm, ever building, building, building towards its inevitably violent release. Five minutes into the song, a torrent of rain swells down, accompanied by a hail of steady notes on guitar. At the eight-minute mark, a terrifyingly grandiose symphony of raging vocals and the combined force of Helstad's explosive bass, Markus Støle's drums, and Ole Ulvik Rokseth's guitar brings us the apocalyptic moment we've all been waiting for. Simply put, it is jaw-droppingly huge. 'They Came With Sunlight' (2019) has officially begun.

The following track, "I, Vanish," would make a fine companion to Yob's "The Screen." It ticks and tocks and grinds its gears like the mechanical clock of some mad horologist, who watches each finely tuned movement closely to see if we are nearer to Doomsday. This and the succession of tracks that follow take us on an ethereal journey of sorts. The music gives a continual sense of flow -- whether with the echo of chords, the precise rhythms of repeated notes, or the fury of blinding tremolos, we are always moving, moving, moving. The complexity of movement may find some drawing comparisons with Black Cobra, Mastodon, perhaps even Tool and Meshuggah.

They Came With Sunlight by SÂVER

"Influx" breaks with this form just long enough to make us question what we thought was real. Are we awake in the real world or in some kind of a dream where the rules still aren't known? It feels like we are floating in a state of suspended animation. The lyrics throughout the album are obscure, making it hard to get a straight answer one way or another. Perhaps the point is to ponder the larger themes exposited by these opaque words, to free our minds to wander and explore the possibilities. I will say the interview that follows helps to clear up at least one or two mysteries for us, but overall the material remains high concept, abstract, and surreal.

They Came With Sunlight by SÂVER

"How They Envisioned Life" is the most heart-wrenching song of the lot. There is real pain here, as the singer lashes out with some of the purest rage on record at everything he believed to be true and faithful about his reality. There's also what appears to be a tug of war. The light wants him, the dark wants him. Is this a near-death experience? I'll let you be the judge.

"Step out of light!" - Dark Frozen by fright, left to survive Under the sky Leave!! Leave my soul to him!

They came - They saw How they envisioned life Embrace the warmth that I have left you with

Please let us stay Through depths and stone I see light

Leave – Leave my soul to him

They came - They saw How they envisioned light Your rage - minds covered This ancient hollowed out fight I have left you - Light

"Dissolve To Ashes" gets even stranger with references to "cosmic shuttles" and panicked attempts to find a path that will lead to light. Come to think of it, this is actually is starting to feel like the kind of things I dream about on the regular!

They Came With Sunlight by SÂVER

The ancient archetypal struggle between light and darkness comes to a head in the album's longest track, the twelve-and-a-half minute "Altered Light." There are hints that maybe the light isn't quite what it seems and that a little sleight of hand is involved when some people promise to show us the way.

I'd like to point out something I've not mentioned up to this point: melody. The riffs on this album are, for lack of a better expression, very "hummable." This means these little earworms will be working their magic on you long after you've walked away from the record. I've found myself humming or tapping the theme to this song at the grocery store, at work, while doing laundry, you name it. Look, I don't have the answers to the riddles presented by They Came WIth Sunlight. What I can offer you is SÂVER. Oh, and if you dig this kind of sound, be sure and check out Markus Støle and Ole Rokseth's other project HYMN.

Photograph by Adrian Kraakefingar Vindedal

Interview with SÂVER's Ole Rokseth

~Photographs by Pål Bellis~

“It sounds like war.”

Congratulations on a successful album launch via Pelagic Records and for debuting at the #10 spot on the Doom Charts with 'They Came With Sunlight' (2019).

Thanks, Billy! The response has been overwhelming. We are super stoked.

The last time we checked in, Tombstones had just disbanded and then I think I lost track of the story for a good two years after that. What was going on in the backdrop leading up to the formation of SÂVER?

We spent a year, more or less, in our rehearsal space after Tombstones, just writing new material without having a plan. I don't think it took that long before we knew we had to make something of it, so we talked alot about what type of band we wanted to start and what type of music we wanted to play. We all knew we wanted to do something different. So it's been a lot of experimenting with sounds and gear to get to where we are now.

What does the band’s name signify?

It means "sleep" or "sleeping" in an old Norwegian dialect, from out in the woods where Ole Helstad is from.

“We wanted to just leave.”

The opening line from “Dissolve To Ashes” starts with: “They came with sunlight” -- it’s also the title of the album. I’m used to song and album titles that refer to the menace of darkness and those that prey in the shadows, but here you’re anticipating the arrival of something with the dawn. Can you illuminate this?

I think that line, in particular, is spoken through someone or something else “on the other side.” The clean singing sort of amplifies that. At some point during the writing process, I painted this picture in my mind of three dudes just leaving the earth towards a better destination, in search of “The Light.” So most of the lyrics is based around that journey. I think people relate to that and that's why it's equally heavy as the typical “metal lyrics.” It's just about life, man.

“It's just about life, man.”

So much of metal is focused on pain, misery, death, subjugation, and very little is written about “the light” -- especially not in a style as heavy, so it really intrigues me.

Yes, well, I don't think there is any point in writing about stuff thats not from your own experiences and thought. We just sort of turned it all around and wrote about our journey away from death, shadows, and battleaxes. It was really about what all of us went through at the time. We wanted to just leave.

The tracks on They Came With Sunlight are huge. This and the recent Yob album are among the few that have been successful in writing cohesive long-form compositions that carry an effective dramatic arc. How does a piece like “I, Vanish” come together?

That song is based on a bass riff that Ole brought to the table one night. And I guess we just wrote it the way we know best. Weed, beer, and a sweaty rehearsal space with low lighting. We are all believers of repetition in music, and that song is all about that for sure. This whole album really came together naturally and I think it's because we all had a need to express ourselves in a different way than in other bands and we had a clear vision of what we wanted to do early on.

The production value is very high on the new album, capturing the depth, range, and power of your sound admirably. What have you learned about recording your sound now that’s different from when you first started recording albums with Tombstones a decades ago?

I always have all of these different ideas and thoughts on how to record the next album to make it better than what we have done before. But we always, at least in these types of bands, conclude that recording live is the only way. And having a studio tech that can provide good recordings of all the instruments is key. So we basically just do what we have been doing at rehearsals and know that the guys behind the desk just captures it at that moment. Joona Hassinen at Studio Underjord in Sweden was that guy, and he couldn't have done a better job. Everything sounded really good straight out of the mixing board, so we knew early on that this was gonna be a super heavy experience. That being said, we had a lot of weird accidents on this album, as well, that Joona decided to just leave in. Art by accident, dude. Always cool. We obviously added stuff after recording it live, but it's not really that far from it.

“Three dudes just leaving the earth towards a better destination in search of The Light.”

If nothing else, doom is surely infamous for its “low ‘n’ slow” approach. How in the name of Hades did you get such a damning sound on this record? What did you tune to, for example, on “Distant Path”?

It's that whole year of continuously hitting the rehearsal space, practicing and trying out different sounds. We knew we wanted to try and distance ourselves from all the other “doom” bands that are out there, but yet not losing ourselves and what we think sounds cool.

We tune in drop A, and the guitars have pretty thin string gauges to get that open, heavy sound. Not that much distortion either, to be honest. Most of the fuzz comes from Helstad's 215 bass cabinet. A Lot of the sound also came together after I bought a Fender Telecaster Deluxe and combined it with an older Peavey transistor head. Bringing a synthesizer to mix also opened a lot for us. I inherited a real passion for old and new synths from my brother. His collection of synths is out of this world -- thanks Pål.

As Joona said after re-amping the fuzz bass, “It sounds like war.” I will never stop trying out new gear and trying new weird shit, and that's a big part of me evolving as a musician.

Picking up from that last question, the level of tonal depth you were able to capture on this recording is truly remarkable. Without ever feeling muted or distorted, you’ve managed to capture the grandiosity and rumbling low-end of those bruising chords.

Joona basically just recorded -- with great technique and experience -- what we played then and there. If the song is heavy, and you believe in it, it's gonna come out heavy. No matter what amp you use or what pickup you have in you guitar. I'm pretty sure Jimi Hendrix would make a shitty B.C. Rich Warlock from 2009 sing and penetrate your soul in the same way he does with his Stratocaster.

What amps and gear did you use in the recording?

We recorded it live with the same set-up as we use at gigs and rehearsals. I won't get into all the pedal details. On guitar, I played through a stereo setup with 412 cabinets. Peavey Century Bass Series and and old Simms Watts 100. Well, bass was actually reamped, but Helstad uses his Rickenbacker 4003 through a Ampeg SVT Classic with an 810 cab and a Peavey Standard with a Peavey 215 cab. Markus, of course, can make any drum kit sound amazing, though I don't remember the particulars of what he used in this recording.

To record the synth parts, I borrowed his brother's Korg MS10 from the '70s. One of our all time favourite synthesizers, but it's old, rare, and not cheap, so recently I bought a Moog Sub Phatty that I bet you will hear more of on our next record. If people want to know more, we love talking gear. Come check us out live and have a chat.

How did you arrive at the decision to use synthesizers in these compositions, anyway?

I've been active in two other electronica-based bands: Gundelach and Hubbabubbaklubb. I got inspired by these two acts and my brother, who plays synth in those two bands, as well. As mentioned, he's got an enormous collection of vintage, kickass synthesizers. All of us love the sound of it and also electronic music, and we wanted to use that as a tool to divide our sound from the common doom band. You can expect more synth on the next album.

"Art by accident, dude. Always cool.”

How have your live performances gone so far? We’d love to have you back to the States sometime!

Really good! Again, the response has been overwhelming. As a band, it's really important to set goals, and we have met almost all of our goals to this date. It's crazy. We are really looking forward to next year! Playing the US has been a goal for all of us forever and is something we definitely want to make happen with S VER. Hopefully next year, Billy, we can meet up and have a beer.

The Great SÂVER Giveaway

The band has been kind enough to offer 15 free downloads of their new album to 15 lucky souls. Redeem one code below at pelagicrecords.bandcamp.com/yum.

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