We brought you news that it would be emerging this summer back in issue 083, so we’re chuffed to pieces to present the ENTIRE new album from Gothenburg’s Runemagick. Evoked From Abysmal Sleep is out now (today in fact) on Aftermath Music and it comes highly recommended by all who have heard it so far! ZT scribe Zoltar interviewed the band’s mastermind Nicklas ‘Terror’ Rudolfsson for the above mentioned news piece, which we’re also sharing below.
Nicklas Rudfolsson ‘metal ov death’ beast brought back from the dead. The ever-curious Zoltar puts his nose to the ground to investigate.
After a ten years hiatus, Runemagick have officially reunited and are recording as we speak their upcoming 12th album, and first since 2007’s Dawn Of The End called Evoked From Abysmal Sleep. The brainchild of Nicklas ‘Terror’ Rudolfsson, the band was initiated in 1990 with future Death Breath Robert Pehrsson but only produced a handful of demos and rehearsal tapes before being put on hold after Rudolfsson was asked to join Sacramentum on drums. Three years later, the band was reactivated with Peter Palmdahl from Dissection on bass before releasing an impressive series of albums which saw them evolving from their early, classic black/death roots to something darker and heavier. By the time they stopped gigging in 2005, the band had been reduced to a trio with Rudolfsson on guitar and vocals, his wife Emma on bass and Daniel Moilanen (The Project Hate, Lord Belial) on drums. Three years later, they discreetly announced their hiatus, but why? “It was a mixture of things: lack of inspiration; Daniel playing with other bands; Emma studying, plus becoming a dad,” he reveals. It nevertheless didn’t mark the end of his musical activities, far from it in fact. Besides the one-off Rapid Terrör (‘evil’ speed metal), he formed Necrocurse with Hellbutcher from Nifelheim before going on a killing spree with the far doomier Heavydeath with whom he produced and recorded the insane amount of ten demos, three albums and few EPs between 2013 and 2017. But then, as he puts it, he got “the real Runemagick riff inspiration again, so I wrote a couple of songs. At the same time, Killtown Deathfest asking me once again if I would consider performing at this year’s edition urged me to resurrect the old beast once again. I just let my inspiration flow, but I hear similarities with our mid-period albums – like Enter The Realm Of Death, Darkness Death Doom or On Funeral Wings.”
The album was entirely written by Nicklas, “although Daniel told me he has some ideas we might end up recording as well,” and will include ‘Runes Of The Undead’ and ‘A Rising Fume Of Returning Death’ among others, suggesting that they’re still dwelling lyric-wise with the same occult and arcane topics. Mixed by his Necrocurse and Heavydeath compadre Johan Bäckman, it should be released “hopefully in early summer” by Aftermath Music. He admits that Katatonia’s (with whom Daniel has been playing with since 2015) current “pause” will probably allow him to dedicate more time to Runemagick, and that their former drummer Jonas Blom, who played on their debut The Supreme Force Of Eternity back in 1998, will help them out live as session guitar player. 2018 is said to be “a quiet year for Heavydeath”, although there’s still a compilation and a split EP scheduled. An ever-busy man, Nicklas will also put out the debut album of his own black/death project Domedag (Nu Nalkas Ragnarök) and has just unleashed two demos with Saltas, the “obscure slow death with blood” project he’s doing with one of the guys from Irkallian Oracle, one of them being set to be officially released on tape by Nuclear War Now!.
info } runemagick.bandcamp.com
words } zoltar
This feature originally appeared in Zero Tolerance issue #083.
