[NEWS] MOMENTUM (Iceland) signs with Dark Essence Records: "This one [will] dig even deeper"

Dark Essence Records is gearing up to release the Momentum's highly anticipated sophomore full-length album The Freak Is Alive on a date that's yet to be announced. As far as forward thinking, progressive (extreme) metal is concerned, this one will be for the books! 

They say patience is a virtue and good things come to those who wait. Both of these truths are applicable to Momentum, a band whose sticktoitiveness is that of a dormant leviathan that dives deep both for the hunt and reposing. And when this leviathan roams, everyone watches with anticipation and respect. You know, reading up on the sperm whales respiration and diving, all I could see was a perfect Momentum analogy in terms of the music's expansiveness and mind-jolting, psychedelic concepts. Humour me here,

The sperm whale has adapted to cope with drastic pressure changes when diving. The flexible ribcage allows lung collapse, reducing nitrogen intake, and metabolism can decrease to conserve oxygen.

 [...] While sperm whales are well adapted to diving, repeated dives to great depths have long term effects. 

Momentum is not a band that's ever truly content. They keep moving, growing and challenging themselves and their audience on their own accord. Stop what you're doing and join them.
The press release says "...bone-crushing heaviness broken up by soft singing and relaxed clean passages, intense vocals layered over discordant, staccato bursts, and mingling with eerie sound textures that explode into high-impact power chords..." All of that is true but it merely scratches the surface. To go deeper, I got in touch  with frontman, Holaf (vocals/bass), and he had this to say (below) about signing with Dark Essence Records, the forthcoming Freak is Alive and his visual art.

Congratulations on your signing! How did you strike a relationship with the label? Did they approach you or you them? What was it that made you think Dark Essence would be an ideal partner in crime?
Holaf: Thank you, we're very happy about it. Earlier this year (April) we played Roadburn Festival and were honoured with the opportunity to premiere our latest album there.
At the aforementioned premiere we met the Dark Essence people and started talking. They saw our show the day after and in the following weeks of the festival we started discussing things on more serious terms, leading to the signing of this contract.
What struck us first is that they are very nice down to earth people, aim for a long-lasting relationship with their bands and they pride themselves of a personal relationship with their artists.

Your new album has been in the making for a long while and you've have had an ample time to let it steep and stew. Where have you gone and where are you at since the incredible Fixation, At Rest (reviewed here)? I've privy to hearing the material and the first thing to strike me is that it is still very heavy and brooding, and you are exploring your vocal range more than ever.
Holaf: Well we have the reputation of changing quite a bit between albums but I would say, if you compare this one to Fixation, at Rest, that this one digs much deeper but maybe more on a similar scale, musically speaking.
It's true that there's a lot of vocal exploration and we have piano and keyboards in there most of the time. But for us this has simply been almost a continuos process from the last one and our characteristics as a band just develop along the way.

You're one of the few bands around today that's very difficult to categorise, meaning you have your own sound. This you have in common with fellow countrymen Sólstafir. One can't slab a genre tag on you guys. People love a quick fit, so, are you worried Momentum will go over people's heads?
Holaf: No not really. We've been going down this path for a long time. If we wanted to fit in I guess we already would have taken a different turn. It might sound tacky but our main emphasis is maintaining a free flow of ideas and we just let our developments come naturally. We've managed to fuse together a weird combination of styles and it's ever growing with artwork, concept and lyrics as well. Categorising is demon, but sadly a necessary one. I've never gotten the hang of it myself. It's been fun though hearing what people come up with when they start describing us. Everyone has such a different perception of things.

Fixation, At Rest saw you apply your idiosyncratic surreal art to each individual song to ad an extra contextual layer to both the music and lyrics to each song and the album as a whole, making it a release that was more than sound. How important is this aspect of your artistic expression and how would you describe your style? Furthermore, what's to expect for those who'll hold The Freak is Alive in their hands in regards to the complete experience, with the marriage of sound and artwork in mind?
Holaf:  Stylistically is used to play around with the notion of "a man unable to have weird dreams so he starts creating them himself, in waking life" but here we are again at this categorising demon. I just really don't dwell too much on it, at least not on that level.
This has become a very important part of the process for me. I never really sit down with a particular vision in my head when I do this. I just start with one thing, add something to it and before I realise it there's a concept brewing. Most of the lyrics get written from me trying to interpret these images, somewhat poetically in coherence with my emotions but I deliberately keep it quite open because I feel it's the observers subconsciousness that should take control. I have absolutely no idea how people will experience this, I'd love to know but the main reason for this way of doing things is just my personal urge.

This man that's unable to have weird dreams, is that the equivalent of a suppressed freak? So when he's finally able to dream weird, the freak is alive?
Holaf: Well yes kind of but by creating these dreams he manages a stage of actually entering into this different universe, an ulterior universe. Where the weirdness is subconsciousness, underlying emotions and urges breaking out in some visual shapes and characters.

We'll have to wait for a complete track-listing, but here we have four titles in no particular order:
"The Freak Is Alive"
"Bury The Eyes Once Gold"
"Familiar Unknown"
"Between Two Worlds"
- Birkir Fjalar

Contact the band (email)   Website   Twitter   #TheFreakIsAlive  


Band Photo credit: Gunnar Már Pétursson

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