After Chaos: Nocturnal Vigil is finally released.
The new Runemagick album is a double album and the second chapter in the ongoing cycle that began with Cycle of the Dying Sun (Dawn of Ashen Realms). The two albums are connected by a red thread, but After Chaos moves further into the night, into a more introspective, ritualistic and nocturnal realm.
This is not an album created for passive or fragmented listening.
Set aside the time.
Step away from the constant noise, notifications, doom-scrolling and distractions of the present world. Put the phone away. Sit down, walk into the forest, turn off the lights, or simply create a space where you can actually listen.
Then begin at the beginning.
After Chaos: Nocturnal Vigil was conceived as an album in the traditional sense: a complete work with its own flow, dynamics and atmosphere. The long compositions, transitions, heavier passages, quieter sections and ambient elements are all parts of the same journey. The double-album format gave the music the space it needed without forcing it into something shorter or more immediate.
There is no requirement to understand or interpret everything in a particular way. In fact, I would rather leave enough space for the listener to enter the music and discover something of their own within it.
The album continues to explore themes around cycles, transformation, death and renewal, nature, consciousness and our place within something much older and greater than the individual. The image of Urd’s weave remains important: what has been, what is becoming, the consequences of what we do, and the threads connecting us to what came before and to what may yet come.
Nature is also present throughout this world, not merely as scenery but as something living. I spend a lot of time in the forests around Bredfjället where I live, and part of the shamanic drumming heard on the album was recorded there. That environment, silence and distance from the artificial noise of modern life inevitably find their way into the music.
Dísa Draugurinn once again contributes guest vocals and shamanic chants, bringing another colour and presence to certain passages. She also created illustrations used in the album artwork. We have known each other for many years and have previously performed dark ambient music together, so these elements have developed naturally rather than being added simply as decoration.
The final part of the double album moves further away from conventional metal structures and into quieter, more ambient and meditative territory. For me, that is an important part of the journey. Darkness does not always need another wall of guitars. Sometimes space, repetition, a drum, a voice or something barely audible can carry more weight.
And although After Chaos: Nocturnal Vigil completes this particular chapter, it is not necessarily an ending.
Those who follow the entire journey may already find a small thread pointing towards what may yet come.
LISTEN / DIGITAL
https://runemagick.bandcamp.com/album/after-chaos-nocturnal-vigil
DOUBLE VINYL & DOUBLE CD
https://hammerheart.com
CASSETTE
https://intoitrecords.com
ONLY PHYSICAL MEDIA IS REAL!
Thank you to everyone who has supported Runemagick, bought the records, listened, written about the music, shared it and taken the time to enter this world.
But above all: take your time with the album.
Do not rush it.
Let it unfold.
And if possible, return to it. Some journeys reveal different paths the second or third time through.
Nicklas Rudolfsson
ᛁ · ᛚ · ᚾ · ᚱ
P.S.
Go out into the forest and into nature whenever you can.
Leave the screens and the endless stream of information behind for a while. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Listen to the wind moving through the trees. Observe what is living around you without immediately trying to turn it into content, an image or something to consume.
Feel its power and its living soul.
Remember that you are not standing outside nature looking in. You are part of it. A thread within Urd’s weave, connected to what has been, what is, and what may yet come.
Open your mind to its forces.
Listen.
Create.
Use the time you have in this earthly existence to make something, experience something and leave something behind.
The weave continues.