Progressive Stoner Rockers Vitskär Süden have just released their excellent new album Vessel today on esteemed Hard Rock Label RIPPLE MUSIC and we're excited to premiere the new video for one of the standout tracks "R’lyeh" which you can watch below:
The works of H.P. Lovecraft have always bubbled beneath the surface of Vitskär Süden’s music, the band considering themselves to be purveyors of weird fiction and cosmic horror in musical form. Storytelling has been present on all three V.S. albums, whether in a literal or figurative sense, so it seemed only natural to nod to the sunken city where great Cthulhu dwells in one of the band’s tracks.
“I believe I began singing the city’s name, R’lyeh, as temp vocals when we were working this song out and it just seemed to stick,” says vocalist/bassist Martin Garner. “We’d been building around the track’s main guitar riff for a few years and always been planning to do something with it – we Easter-egged it on our previous record The Faceless King within the spacey section of the song “The Way – Part 1” – and I suppose Lovecraft just chose this moment to make his appearance.”
In that spirit, the music video for “R’lyeh” features footage from a 2005 silent film version of The Call of Cthluhu directed by Andrew Leman, who co-runs the HP Lovecraft Historical Society based out of Los Angeles. Garner had contacted Leman early in the writing process to ask about the correct pronunciation of the fabled mythical city, but Leman assured him that the city’s name was in the alien tongue of the Great Old Ones and impossible to pronounce via the human vocal apparatus. So there was really no wrong way to pronounce it. That being the case, Garner pronounced it the way it sang best.
As for the music itself – three members of the band found themselves stranded from longtime drummer Christopher Martin for part of the recording process, and guitarist Julian Goldberger crafted an ARP and drum sequencer part so the rest of the band could begin tracking the elements of “R’lyeh”. The band fell in love with it and it became the heartbeat and foundation of the track.
“I’d been listening to a ton of Depeche Mode at the time and those sounds were creeping into my periphery,” says Garner. “I’m also a huge fan of John Carpenter’s film music, so I was fully ready to hear what the ARP might sound like turned loose in the dark soundscape of our Vitskär Süden world. Having the ARP in play also allowed me to get up into the midrange with the bassline a bit, since it was holding down the low end. So it really influenced and redefined what was happening sonically in the track.”
Thanks to Purple Sage PR for all of the info.
Vessel is available to buy now on CD/DD/Vinyl via Ripple Music
