The last three years have been a challenge for anyone involved in the music industry, and Svalbard are no exception to this. 2020 was primed to be their breakout year, their album When I Die, Will I Get Better? finished recording before the word “lockdown” crossed anyone’s mind. Now three years later, a lot has changed for both Serena and Svalbard, as she exclaims, “the last three years have been an absolute whirlwind. I saw a post on social media the other day that was like: When I Die… is now three years old. How?! How is it three years old. That’s crazy!”
Its easy to forget how precarious the situation surrounding When I Die… was. Mere weeks away from releasing, their label at the time Holy Roar Records collapsed, some of the surviving crew went on to establish Church Road Records and scrambled to ensure release dates were honoured. “Everything that happened with the collapse of Holy Roar was pretty hectic time, obviously. Sammy and Justine did such an amazing job releasing the album on Church Road Records. They managed to somehow get that album out on time, despite everything happened with Holy Roar maybe the week before. So I think Justine and Sammy and Church Road records in general a real credit to the UK scene,” she smiles.
Whirlwind may have been a bit of an understatement, now on the other side of a global pandemic, Serena has also released her own signature guitar with Jackson and a solo black metal record under the name Noctule. “[Church Road Records] released Noctule as well. So it’s a really, really nice working relationship that I have with them”. Fortunately, When I Die… still released to widespread critical acclaim landing high up on several album of the year lists and continuing to raise the band’s profile and garnered attention from the wider industry, too. As she explains, “since then, being signed to Church Road Records with the sort of reception and the success of When I Die…, then going into talks with Nuclear Blast and sort of catching their attention from that was absolutely surreal. It still doesn’t feel real to me that our album is coming out on Nuclear Blast Records. That’s a record label that holds all my favourite bands and a lot of my favourite albums so just absolutely over the moon to be part of it.”
First teasing the prospect of new material all the way back in February with “Eternal Spirits”, a touching tribute to musical heroes who have passed away too soon, it wasn’t until July when Svalbard revealed their upcoming album The Weight Of The Mask alongside the single ‘Faking It’. “[Faking It] definitely meets a lot of expectations of what I think people would hope for from a Svalbard song,” she states. This is also true of the album closer “To Wilt Beneath The Weight”, with the album bookended either side with more ‘traditional’ Svalbard compositions, Serena explains: “‘Faking It’ and ‘To Wilt Beneath the Weight’ are basically the bread of the album. Then all the weird, interesting flavours are in between, which is when it gets interesting. It was a very deliberate choice to kind of bookend the album that way.”
“It still doesn't feel real to me that our album is coming out on Nuclear Blast Records”
It’s not just business as usual on The Weight Of The Mask though, the most noticeable difference being the prevalence of clean vocals across a lot of the album, more so than previous releases. “It’s been such a sort of confidence building exercise, doing more clean vocals in Svalbard. Doing harsh vocals does really damage your clean singing voice. I’ve always found it really difficult to jump between the two live. So, I think, the sort of increase in clean vocals on this album is just a sort of showcase of how I feel a lot more confident vocally.”
In particular with the most recent single “How To Swim Down” standing out the most in this regard, an honest to god emotional post-rock epic with only clean vocals. “We are hugely inspired by post rock bands like MONO, Explosions In The Sky, This Will Destroy You and Mogwai. There’s so many post rock bands that have really had a deep impact on Svalbard. So it was really nice to fully explore that side of our influences and just go for a song that has more fragility and emotional vulnerability to it as opposed to out and out heaviness. It was a really deliberate choice to just have clean singing on that song. I wanted it to have that kind of slight loneliness to it and that fragility to it.”
Accompanied by an emotionally devastating and stunningly beautiful animated video, Serena was heavily involved in the process: “I storyboarded the video before I sent the idea to the animator, so they had a good idea of the kind of narrative that we were looking for. Boy Tillekens did an absolutely incredible job taking everything and creating the video that we have. We always wanted an animated video, but it was a case of finding the right song, I think, because “How To Swim Down” is one of those songs. It’s a bit like a journey, we’re really happy with it. I’ve only watched it twice in full because it makes me cry so hard.”
After such an emotionally frail experience, having the next track on the album, “Be My Tomb”, suddenly shift into an almost celebratory and uplifting melody is jarring in all the right ways. “I always think the start of ‘Be My Tomb’ sounds a bit like it’s gonna go into Eye Of The Tiger,” Serena jokes, the punchy rhythm punctuating the melodic hook having similar timing to Survivor’s 80s classic. “There is the contrast that runs throughout the album where it veers quite dramatically from really sorrowful, bittersweet, delicate songs to really uplifting, melodic kind of shimmering, metal parts. I think one way I always think of this album is if if you’re in Photoshop, and you put the contrast on full, that’s like the sort of the sonic equivalent of that is on is The Weight Of The Mask.”
As with all of their previous releases, Svalbard once again chose to work with producer Lewis Johns, who at this point has developed a sterling reputation, his credits ranging from Rolo Tomassi, Employed To Serve, Ithaca and Pupil Slicer as well as countless others. “We specifically headhunted Lewis to work with right from the get go of the first stuff that we recorded with him, because we’d heard all the work that he’d done on other bands, albums, and just thought he is an absolutely fantastic producer.” On The Weight Of The Mask you can not only hear the growth of Svalbard themselves, but also of Johns, growing symbiotically throughout their respective careers. “Lewis just continues to get better and better, and develop as a producer. If you listen back to the first album and with what our newest album sounds like. You can hear so much progression, both in his production and in our songwriting and our playing. So it definitely is like we’ve grown together, which is really nice.”
That growth together allowed for further vulnerability, pushing themselves in a comfortable environment to explore, such as with the focus on clean vocal performances. Not only that though, guitarist Liam Phelan contributes several violin performances on various songs and hints of pad synthesisers are layered in various places. “There are synth pads on songs like “Faking It”, and there are synth pads and other sort of sections of different songs. That is something we started doing on When I Die, Will I Get Better?. It’s not meant to be at the front of the mix, it’s meant to kind of just sort of fill things out and add a slightly different magical tone. But not you know, not sound like Dimmu Borgir” Serena grins. “We never want to create something in the studio that we can’t recreate live, because we’re one of those bands, we don’t play to any backing tracks. Everything that you hear when you come to a Svalbard show is 100%, all four of us on stage making that sound. So we don’t want to go into the studio and create things that we can’t deliver live.”
“We always wanted an animated video, but it was a case of like, finding the right song. I think because “How To Swim Down” is one of those songs.”
One of the standout tracks that will be very interesting to hear in a live environment is “November”. Conjuring a bleak, frail and chilly atmosphere as the title suggests, opening with reverb soaked guitars and Serena’s spoken word vocal delivery sets itself apart from the bands discography. “The spoken word on that song was influenced by a band called Saternus, who have a song called ‘For Your Demons’. I always felt the emotional impact of that song was really intense. I wanted to try and create something similar.”
The way the songs flow through The Weight Of The Mask very much feels like a journey, working perfectly in its intended album format and clearly a lot of care, attention and hard work has gone into the structuring of the album and writing some of the bands best songs to date. “There’s definitely a lot of construct that went into the songwriting on this. A lot of really putting the music under the microscope and analysing which parts complement other parts. Really trying to think about how we can best serve the songs when we’re when we’re constructing them. I describe it as a casserole.” Serena laughs at her own analogy, “It’s like a casserole of all the various and wildly different influences of style borrowed all of our mad ideas condensed into 45 minutes.”
Preparations to support The Weight Of The Mask with live shows are already in place, with a short European run throughout October shortly after the album’s release, ultimately culminating in a headline show in Leeds and Svalbard’s marquee slot at Cult Of Luna’s stacked day festival Beyond The Redshift. The band find themselves billed third from top on the main stage, underneath the legendary Napalm Death and headliners Cult Of Luna. Although they went on an extended run with Cult Of Luna in 2022, Serena is still in awe, “It’s unreal. It’s absolutely crazy. I’m so excited to play Beyond the Redshift. I mean it’s just it’s a privilege to be part of a lineup like that, it really is.”
Obviously a full UK tour in support of the album is on the cards at some point for 2024, with Svalbard typically choosing great supports. Their 2021 tour saw CLT DRP and Heriot opening for them, a short run that followed in early 2022 featured Mountain Caller and Underdark. Questions surrounding potential supports are well warranted, Serena already has some ideas in mind. “There’s two bands that I’d really like for Svalbard to do some UK shows with. Those two bands would be Cage Fight and Pest Control, I would really like to play some shows with them. Both those bands are doing amazing stuff and definitely on the up. It would be fun to play with them.”
Serena herself encapsulates the band’s continued ethos in a simple quote: “You know when it feels like a song knows you better than your friends do?” For long time fans of the band, it’s easy to pick any number of songs from their discography that tap into a deeply personal connection with the listener. When asked the same question in relation to their new album, Serena had to take a moment: “I think the song that knows me better than my friends do on The Weight Of The Mask would be…. Oh, that’s a really hard question…” An apology and a chuckle were exchanged for leaving the toughest question for last, “I would say ‘Pillar In The Sand’, only really I know the exact parts of what I’m referring to with those lyrics. That one is a very, very personal song for me”.