photo credit: Cunene
Elvenking have announced the sequel to their 2019 record, Reader of the Runes – Divination! The story will continue on April 28, 2023 with Reader of The Runes – Rapture, via AFM Records. To celebrate the announcement, these dark metallers have shared a video for the song “Rapture.” The record was written between 2020 and 2022, and recorded in May and October of 2022 by the group and producer Scott Atkins (Cradle of FIlth, Behemoth), who also took over the mixing and mastering.
Guitarist Aydan and vocalist Damna comment on the track:
“After three years of absence, we decided to give our fans a taste of the album that could be as plenty as possible. ‘Rapture’ is one of the longest tracks of the lot and we feel it has all the epicness, the tragic nature and most of the nuances that the album incorporates in its entire length, so this is what we wanted to offer to our listeners as a first glimpse of “Reader of the Runes – Rapture”. Also, lyrically it is the perfect link between the previous chapter and this one, as it is the Introduction. The story opens on the Reader of the Runes himself and we read about his mindset and plans before the climax that will be described in the rest of the songs.”
On the album, Aydan and Damna add:
“How would we have approached musically the second chapter of the ‘Reader of the Runes’ trilogy? That’s a question we asked ourselves many times before finalizing the songwriting process Working both on ROTR Part 2 and Part 3 at the same time, really helped us spread the songs, the lyrics and the atmospheres on the whole remaining part of the story as the development of the events needed a strong backing from the music. So, Part 2 is indeed darker, it needed to be tragic and violent and this gave us the chance to fully breathe the soundscape we already had in mind as we started to write songs in early 2020. We feel that with this album we have cast a milestone and set a further limit in what we can do by mixing wisely what we deeply love in metal. We are very satisfied with all the shades that compose these eleven songs; altogether they make a canvas we are very proud of. Part 3 instead will explore the disclosure of all the mysteries narrated in the first two chapters and for this very reason you’ll have to expect even further different musical nuances in the future of this trilogy.”
Watch the clip below and pre-order the album here:
Tracklist:
01) Rapture
02) The Hanging Tree
03) Bride of Night
04) Herdchant
05) The Cursed Cavalier
06) To the North
07) Covenant
08) Red Mist
09) Incantations
10) An Autumn Reverie
11) The Repentant
