As a follow-up to their widely-acclaimed 2017 debut album “Expect Nothing”, Sweden’s DEAD KOSMONAUT have recorded a four-track EP entitled REKVIEM, due for release by High Roller Records on September 20th.
As bassist and composer Mattias Reinholdsson is proud to admit, the key to DEAD KOSMONAUT is variety. “Rekviem” is Metal, certainly, but the EP showcases the genre in all its glorious diversity. Of the four tracks on offer, hook-laden opener ‘Frozen in Time’ is the newest and went under the title ‘UFO Song’ when Mattias first demoed it. Lyrics were then provided by John Shamus Gaffney of Sinister Realm, who came up with a science fiction-orientated concept.
The elegiac ‘House of Lead (Nobody’s Home)’ is a reworking of the track ‘House Of Lead’ from “Expect Nothing”, while the other two songs could have appeared on the band’s debut had things panned out differently. The instrumental ‘Skyhooks And Sound Mirrors’ lost out to ‘Grimeton’ when it came to deciding on what to record for “Expect Nothing”, and the spiralling, doom-laden title track ‘Rekviem’ was, in Mattias’s words “too extreme” for their debut. “It hardly has any lyrics and it’s more ‘cinematic’ than any other to DEAD KOSMONAUT song. The song came to be many years ago when both my grandfathers died within a couple of months. I was much younger at the time and the lyric reflects that even when people close to your heart dies life goes on. It was a bit of a bleak insight, but that’s how I felt at the time, and still do.”
“When metal was in its infancy bands had more varied input to their music. These were musicians who’d not grown up on metal music as it didn’t exist, so their take on it had many different facets and albums had acoustic songs, jazzy songs, bluesy songs, progressive songs… I want DEAD KOSMONAUT to be that sort of band, so that when you listen to one of our songs you don’t really know what’s coming next. Not that we’re a nostalgia band, using only old amps and stuff, nor do we ‘copy and paste’ from the Seventies. The sound of DEAD KOSMONAUT is completely contemporary.” – Mattias Reinholdsson, Dead Kosmonaut

TRACKLIST

1. Frozen in Time  (5:28)

2. House of Lead (Nobody’s Home)  (4:02)

3. Skyhooks and Sound Mirrors  (4:07)

4. Rekviem  (10:09)

LINE-UP
Pelle Gustafsson (Nifelheim) – Vocals
Mattias Reinholdsson – Bass
Henrik Johansson – Drums, Keyboards
Fredrik Folkare (Unleashed, Firespawn) – Guitar, Keyboards
Pär Fransson – Guitar

Special guests:
Daniel Moilanen (Katatonia, Runemagic) – Drums on ‘Frozen In Time’ and ‘Rekviem’
Fox Skinner (Grand Magus) – Cello on ‘Rekviem’
https://www.facebook.com/Dead-Kosmonaut-179075279238707

https://www.hrrecords.de

https://www.facebook.com/hrrecords