LOVIATAR
A WARNING FORGED FROM THE FANTASTIC
From the crypts of ancient Egypt to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, metal loves a good legend. Keenly embracing this tradition on their eponymous full-length debut, Canada’s Loviatar conjure a dark and striking landscape of fabled beasts, terrible plagues and Scandinavian deities. “We try to tell a story in pictures and soundtracks,” says drummer JP Sadek, “and myths and fantasy provide the perfect foundation.”
Taking the band’s name from the Finnish goddess of death and disease, JP explains, “Norse and Viking mythology aren’t central to our creative process or vision, but we carry the strength and ferocity of Loviatar into every song.”
Loviatar is a thrilling affair, surging with taut riffs, spinecrushing polyrhythms and dizzying tempos. Effectively split into two parts, the album opens with Stygian Wyrm – an expansive three-part suite about a dragon who interacts with mankind to explore human experiences such as love, betrayal, corruption and murder. JP says, “A song as big as Stygian Wyrm needed a theme that was equally gargantuan.”
Just as most mythology stems from current events, Loviatar is equally informed by today’s headlines, although vocalist/ guitarist JD clarifies, “While you could interpret the songs as warnings, our species isn’t terribly good at heeding them. Better to think of them as eulogies.”
The album closes with Blind Goddess Of The Nine Plagues, an utterly transfixing, 17-minute epic that alternates between soft, ethereal melodies, spacey psychedelic foraging and towering climaxes of terrifying potency.
Entirely self-produced and recorded in their own studio, Loviatar is an expansive and wholly immersive voyage whose scale and ambition are rivalled only by the fantastical creatures within its realm. Showcasing a startling depth and layered with subtle dynamics, the band are enormously pleased with the result. Says JP, “My hope at the outset was for the record to come out exactly as it is – uncompromised.”