KVAEN will release their third album, and first for Metal Blade Records, The Formless Fires, on June 21.
There are many great extreme metal bands in Sweden, but only one from Kalix. This remote beauty spot near the Finnish border, on the northernmost shores of the Baltic, is home to Jacob Björnfot, creative mastermind behind melodic black/death metal project, KVAEN.
A sumptuous but bitingly intense exploration of beauty and violence, KVAEN’s The Formless Fires is a melodic black metal masterwork radiating an inspirational sense of place. Even more than 2020s folky, speed metal-infused debut The Funeral Pyre or 2022’s compelling, expansive follow-up, The Great Below, the vast pine woods and icy lakes are powerfully evoked in the elemental gloom riffs, chilly melodies, and windswept solos running through these eight mighty songs.
