AN ODD BIRD IN THE HAND
Do you have to be defined by one genre? Not if you ask heavy hitters Orochen, which is just what we did as they’re gearing up to premiere their debut album Anthroposcenic, releasing on Suicide Records, for their biggest crowd yet on this year’s SPOT Festival.
Both band members Emil Gustafsson and Jonas Mattsson are thrilled to play abroad for the first time with music from their new release, despite the fact that they’ve never rehearsed it as a band.
– We’ve been recording and working on the new album for nearly two years, and in the mixing process it’s easy to get tired of the material. But to finally be able to run it through together, being in sync with each other and feel the music in your whole body, you really get a fresh start, says Emil.
Not being afraid to experiment, naming their own creation as apocalyptic post-industrial neo-folk, they’re looking forward to the responses from both festival goers and album listeners.
– Having seen the line-up for SPOT there doesn’t seem to be many heavier bands this year, so it will be fun to see how the audience perceives it. It’s rather difficult to define which live scene suits us, but that's where we want to be, says Jonas.
Emil agrees and points to the fact that Orochen span a fairly large space of genres.
– On paper it looks like chaos, but we believe it all fits together, Emil adds.
The new album is a concept of its own with 8 tracks all having different artwork printed on the vinyl, also launching a limited fuzz pedal in collaboration with Fuzzdöden. The fruit of their labor will be shown at their release show, May 28 at Fyrens Ölkafé in Gothenburg.
– It’a combined release gig and art exhibition where all the artwork is exhibited at the same time as we release the vinyl. So we’ve really worked this concept around the new record very carefully together. In all contexts we’ll be the odd bird which is a bit of our hallmark, says Emil.