Norwegian rock band Kvelertak has announced plans to release a new album in 2019. Guitarist Vida Landa made the announcement in a recent interview with Overdrive.
According to Landa, the band is still in the writing phase of the album. Talking about the album’s writing process, he said
“Right now, it’s kind of hard to explain the new material but we are working on the new album and have written a lot of stuff so far. The way it looks now, I guess we are working with things that we felt worked really well for us on ‘Nattesferd‘ and stuff from the other albums that really clicked with us collectively.” Bassist Marvin Nygaard gave even further details, saying, “Right now, it’s mostly been Bjarte [Lund Rolland, the band’s guitarist] that’s been writing but we’ll be entering into the rehearsal studio soon, so we can all start working on the ideas.”
The upcoming album will be the band’s first since frontman Erland Hjelvik decided to leave last year. In kind, it will also be the debut of the band’s new vocalist Ivar Nikolaison. Landa related in the interview that the transition was “seamless,” as Nikolaison had been singing back-up with them for years.
“We were lucky that we had that close connection with Ivar. He’s been part of Kvelertak for a long time and has sung on a few tracks for us in the past, doing backing vocals. We’ve toured together in the past also so he was really the only one that we were thinking of to replace him when Erlend was first talking about leaving. Luckily, Ivar wanted to do it and it’s all just fit really well, thankfully. It would have been much harder to go through the audition process and undergo that process of looking for a new vocalist.”
Kvelertak released their last album, Nattesferd, in 2016. The band is currently on a European/UK tour with Mastodon and Mutoid Man that will see them out on the road through mid-February.
