Death Above Life

Orbit Culture guitarist, vocalist, and founder Niklas Karlsson likens the band’s fifth album to a rebirth. “It’s the first album we’re doing on a big label like Century Media, so that by itself feels like a new chapter,” he tells Apple Music. “But we also put in so much hard work doing all these support tours for a bunch of years to finally someday become steady headliners of our own. So everything feels way bigger and fancier than it’s ever been, with way more responsibility. But we’re ready.” On *Death Above Life*, the Swedish band has taken their hybridized style of modern metal—part groove, part industrial, part melodic death metal—and cinematic soundscapes into new territory. The mechanized and abrasive “Bloodhound” was inspired by the expletive-laced delivery of Slipknot, while “Inside the Waves” kicks off with a big chorus in the style of LINKIN PARK. Elsewhere, “The Storm” rides a triumphant riff in direct reference to fellow Swedes Amon Amarth, while closer “The Path I Walk,” Orbit Culture’s first true ballad, is dedicated to guitarist Richard Hansson’s late father. Below, Karlsson comments on each track. **“Inferna”** “This has the classic Orbit Culture formula, and we wanted to open the album with that to not scare away the old fans. But also, it just felt right because it acted like a bridge from what we’ve done in the past. This album is kind of new when it comes to experimenting with stuff and taking in some different elements that we have never touched before, and even some touches of different genres, too. Putting ‘Inferna’ as the opening track with classic intro, verse, and this big chorus, I guess we played it a bit safe. But we did it to ease the fans into the album.” **“Bloodhound”** “That\'s really where our tour with Slipknot came in, I would say. We thought about putting ‘Bloodhound’ first, because it is kind of like a baseball bat to the face. But then again, we might scare people away. So instead we put ‘Inferna’ first and then ‘Bloodhound’ to create contrast. In terms of the lyrical content, we’ve never used curse words in a song before. But seeing how Slipknot can be with their lyrics, you don’t have to have fancy metaphors all the time. It can be just raw and almost childish lyrics. So that’s where we went—more with feeling rather than the words themselves. It’s the most raw, honest lyric that we’ve written.” **“Inside the Waves”** “This one came from how I’ve been listening to music these days. I get very obsessive with certain stuff. I rediscovered LINKIN PARK during the time I wrote this. I knew they’ve always been this massive, massive band, but it was something that was more in the Walkmen of people when they’re growing up. So I had to discover it with a grown-up ear, if that makes sense. And I was completely sold by LINKIN PARK, so I think naturally I wanted to take some inspiration from how they did their choruses with Chester Bennington back in the day. Also, we have never done a chorus at the first second of a song, so we tried that here.” **“The Tales of War”** “It has this long-ass cinematic intro, which is also one of the reasons it became the first single: We wanted to open the shows with this song. Before, we would always use long cinematic scores as openers—Hans Zimmer or whatever—but this time around, we wanted to incorporate it into the song itself. But this also kind of serves as a bridge from the old material to what we’ve done on this new album, because we also follow the typical Orbit Culture formula.” **“Hydra”** “This came from just trying out guitar sounds. I only had one hand free because I had to keep my left hand on the mouse while chugging, basically for hours, just to find a good sound. And so that marching rhythm was born, and then I just started to add all these soundscapes. During that period of time, *Dune: Part Two* had just come out and I went to the cinema twice to see it, just taking all the sounds in and trying to replicate the soundscape in my computer. That was the birth of ‘Hydra.’” **“Nerve”** “The skeleton of this song was born during the *Nija* days, and I think it’s kind of noticeable too. Our guitarist Richard always loved the demo, but we never knew what to do with it until now. It’s also one of the songs where we switched things around, having the verses completely with raspy vocals rather than growls. So that was a new thing, but of course it has an Orbit Culture twist in the end, because we get too bored to just listen to the same shit.” **“Death Above Life”** “We played more with a horror kind of soundscape and just letting the main riff repeat itself over and over because we felt the ID of the song was in that riff. The rest of the song just lives in the back while this very down-tuned riff goes on and on. The reason it’s called ‘Death Above Life’ is because it feels like a very marching type of song, and this new album is us marching into a new era. It just felt right. And the chorus works with the title, so that helped.” **“The Storm”** “This one is a bit of a wild card. With this album being as dark as it is, we felt like we needed an uplifting, almost comical song just to break the darkness up a bit. The problem we had doing it was that we thought it was way too similar to Amon Amarth, because they have these heroic riffs all the time, and this has a very heroic riff too. But then again, it was made to be uplifting, and Amon Amarth does that so fucking well. So we call this the Amon Amarth song. It’s catchy. It’s rather short to be an Orbit Culture song, but we love it.” **“Neural Collapse”** “It’s a chaotic track with a very mechanical, industrial sound that I always loved so much. To me, it’s like Cyborg mixed with Static-X in some weird way. And Meshuggah is also present in that track for sure. Lyrically, it’s about getting dementia, a pretty tough topic. I imagine getting dementia would be very chaotic, so it is a very chaotic song.” **“The Path I Walk”** “This is my personal favorite of the album. That might sound weird because it’s so far away from the usual metal that we do, but this song has been with us for years. It always was in our computers as a kind of movie soundtrack that we made back in the day, but we never knew what to do with it until we put the lyrics down. It’s a very tough subject because it’s about suicide, so we had to be very careful with our words and have a lot of respect for that. But then Richard said we should dedicate this to his father, who passed by suicide. Then it made more sense for us to have as an Orbit Culture track—it became a very personal and important song for us. Sonically, we have never put our vocal tracks this much in front of your face. It has barely any heavy metal drums or heavy metal bass. It’s just a cinematic track that became our ballad, and I’m super proud of it.”

Bigger, heavier, more ambitious: Orbit Culture bulk up and make a bid for greatness on fifth album

ORBIT CULTURE should really be massive by now. One of those rare bands that seems to sit comfortably outside the mainstream, while plainly having the right stuff to conquer it, the Swedes have been frothed about by devotees for a decade. But going hard against the grain can have its disadvantages, a...

A review of Death Above Life by Orbit Culture, available October 3rd worldwide via Century Media Records.