The Swedish black metal band Svartlod recently released their debut album, The Reverend, on May 9th in digital format. I previously wrote a review of this album, which is truly worth discovering. To learn more about The Reverend, we reached out to the band for an interview, where guitarist and bass player Cantor shared fascinating insights about the album.
Serial Metalbums : Can you introduce Svartlod to our readers ? How did you choose the name Svartlod ?
Cantor : So we’re Svartlod obviously, a new black metal band from Sweden. The band was actually formed back in 2022 but due to various reasons it took us about two years to write, record and release our debut album. We’re a two-man band consisting of Preacher, who handles the vocals and write lyrics, and Cantor who writes the music, play the instruments and do all the mixing etc.
We’ve been playing together for many years in different bands but nothing was in this particular genre. We’ve talked about doing something together in the black metal world but never got around to it until two years ago.
The name Svartlod is actually the swedish word for the type of paint used when painting church windows. We just thought it sounded cool and since we knew that the band’s message/philosophy was going to pretty much cover religion, we thought that it could actually fit quite well as the band’s name.
Serial Metalbums : Tell us about your debut album The Reverend. What is the inspiration behind this album ? What is the concept of the album ?
Cantor : Musically I’ve for a long time been drawn to a little bit more melodic black metal like Dissection and have been listening to Behemoth and Watain for a long time but have been more drawn to death metal overall. It was really Preacher who introduced me to more classic bands like Mayhem, Ondskapt, Funeral Mist and such. I think we’ve managed (or at least tried) to have a varied, and a bit diverse sound, mixing both chaotic elements with haunting melodies and the orchestration on ”Apostasia”.
Lyrically I was quite early into writing about a true story that took place in Sweden about twenty years ago. Basically there was this religious cult that got ”famous” when the wife of a pastor was murdered by their nanny, and allegedly it was all orchestrated by the pastor himself, so they both got convicted. But years before that event and years after another story took place surrounding another pastor. She claimed to be the Bride of Christ and managed to brainwash all other members to believing that she was actually the bride of christ. As you would expect, she took advantage of it and made everyone more or less her slave and there were reports of abuse, sexual assaults and other sick things. Eventually it all came up to the surface, the rest of the world found out, the cult was disbanded and people were convicted for all kinds of things. There are a lot of books and documentaries about it so I can recommend watching or reading any of them, it’s a tragic but interesting story.
Originally we were quite serious about it constructing it more like a play with different characters with an individual voice to each of them and more of a dialogue within the lyrics. But it landed more on a slightly more abstract storyline and captured the essence of the events that took place some twenty years ago.
Serial Metalbums : How was the writing and recording process for the album ? Did you face any particular challenges ?
Cantor : We more or less wrote and recorded all the songs simultaneously, maybe that’s why it took so long. I think all the music was written and recorded over a period of about eight or nine months, the vocals took a little longer for some of the songs. Some of the music has been sitting in my head for a long time, for example, the intro riff to Apostasia was written for a former band of mine when I was like 17 years old, but was never used at the time. But I’ve always had it in the back of my head and have been wanting to use it and now I finally found a place for it. Same thing with Holy Delusions, most of that song was written maybe ten years ago for another project that never happened.
I think the main challenge was just finding the time to get together and actually get the thing recorded as we were of course working full-time and trying to manage time with family and friends so getting our schedules to match was not always easy.
This was really my first recording for a ”professional” release and I’m a self-taught mixer so getting the sound right considering that and recording with pretty cheap gear was a bit of a challenge. We didn’t want it too polished anyway so I think the end result is pretty good anyhow.
Serial Metalbums : What are your plans for the future ?
Cantor : Now we’re mainly focused on playing live, we’re really eager to get that thing going. Nothing is confirmed at the moment but we have some potential gigs coming up.
I’m a little restless as well so I have the music for three, four songs written and have recorded some demos for the next release already so hopefully we can release album number 2 next year. I don’t want to spoil anything but we have another great idea for a concept in our minds and Preacher has some lyrics done so things are moving forward. We’re really excited about this band so we’re trying to balance both writing, rehearsing and playing live as much as we can.
Serial Metalbums: What do you think of the current black metal scene ?
Cantor : Obviously now that we’re a part of the scene, it go a lot better. Just kidding. But I think it’s quite interesting nowadays how it has evolved over the last decade or two. You still have bands like Mayhem, Watain and Marduk alive and kicking ass and keep being relevant doing their thing and on the other side some other more ”experimental” bands like Wormwood, Carach Angren, Gaerea, Batushka blending in other elements into their music which keeps the genre from become stale and predictable, in my opinion.
To listen : Spotify
FULL-LENGTH REVIEW : The Reverend by Svartlod