Heart-stopping funeral doom, direct from the ends of the Earth.
Wedded to the epic landscapes of their native Faroe Islands, Hamferð’s ravishing and jaw-dropping take on funeral doom is about to hit critical mass
It’s definitely something we try to get as much inspiration from as possible, but at the same time subconsciously it affects us every single day,” affirms Theodor Kapnas, guitarist and songwriter with Faroese doom metallers Hamferð, explaining the impact of their local subpolar landscape on their vast, rugged epics. “There are very few even surfaces. It’s basically rocks, mountains, grass and sea; there aren’t many places where we can’t see the sea. There’s very little vegetation, so everything is very open. You can see the landscape changing in the light, the wind moves the grasses and turns the waterfalls upside down. I have to drive over a mountain to get home from work, and every day it looks different, the view is never the same.”
This funereally attired six-piece emerged 10 years ago from the island of Streymoy in Faroe capital Tórshavn, although Theodor admits it’s rare for all six bandmates to be in the same country at the same time. Theodor and vocalist Jón Aldará have both lived abroad, compelled away from their remote homeland by the youthful impulse for adventure. “When you’re a teenager you want to see everything,” recalls Theodor. “You can’t experience all the world has to offer here, far from it. We have a much stronger feeling of isolation, there are fewer things to do, but people always return, and with a very strong feeling of appreciation.
You don’t take it for granted anymore.”
How does the isolation affect them now? Is it something they’ve learnt to embrace? “One hundred years ago it was about survival, it was not easy,” Theodor comments. “There’s been a lot of brutality and heartache here, a lot of sorrow and darkness and hardship throughout our history. Today we have a very cosy lifestyle, we’re a modern society so we can embrace it into our culture. The feeling of isolation will never really go away, but it’s much more connected now.”
Hamferð debuted in 2010 with a striking EP, Vilst er síðsta fet suffused in windswept melancholy and strange, lonely thoughts; three years followed before the album Evst extended their dramatic range, bagging them tour support with
Amorphis and a range of ecstatically received festival slots. Another four years later, their slow wave has finally broken on Támsins
Likam, a majestically finessed and affecting piece of work that rises and falls, broods and shifts like the outcrops and grasslands of their native coastline on a stormy night. Hamferð’s development has been gradual and assured, songs methodically honed and painstakingly arranged, but you can sense their eagerness to step things up, especially with the shot-in-the-arm of a Metal Blade contract.
“That’s the biggest challenge with writing for Hamferð, it takes a lot of time,” muses Theodor. “In 10 years, we’ve released 16 songs…”
Hitherto passive vocalist Jón Aldará suddenly interjects: “You can’t really count the material in songs!” the singer insists, eliciting a chuckled concession from his bandmate. “There’s a lot of fiddling, a lot of time-consuming work, that’s how it is,” Jón continues, “but there’s a question of keeping up morale, and being active – even if you spend a lot of time making an album, you have to make stuff happen at regular intervals. Releasing albums is always the most exciting thing about being in a band, to me. Playing live is, of course, amazing, but creating new music and hearing the final product is always the special thing.”
Their third release, Támsins
Likam is the concluding part of a historical conceptual trilogy, but its lyrics – written and sung entirely in Faroese
– function as the starting point of a narrative released in reverse chronological order.
“It sounds very complicated!” laughs Jón. “Our first EP was about death and coming to terms with regret, from the point of view of a man who abandoned his family. With the second release we went back in time and described what happened leading towards his demise. And this is one step further back, to look at how his life went awry. We wanted to explore it more, build a world around it, so it’s not just ‘I did lots of horrible stuff and now I’m going to die’, but more like, ‘What choices do we have, how do we learn from them, and does it do any good to regret?’ It always springs from some personal thing that you worry about and have to deal with.”
Into this intimate emotional drama are scattered themes and beasts from Faroese folklore: “On our second release we had the huldufólk – mysterious rock-dwelling people,” Jón explains, “and on the new one there’s this transforming creature called a nykur, which lures people into lakes and kills them. It plays a central role in the new album.”
It’s not just Faroese topography and mythology that sets Hamferð apart. Aside from their elegant mourning suits (“It fits well with the way we present our music,” explains Theodor, “it helps us get into the mood, so it’s a theatrical thing as well”) and their breathtaking music video captured live during the 2015 solar eclipse (“It was almost as if the mountain was on fire, it was insane,” remembers Jón; Theodor agrees: “it was a very extreme experience”), among Hamferð’s greatest revelations has been the emergence of
Jón Aldará as one of the scene’s most expressive and distinctive vocalists. Also frontman with renowned Finnish deathproggers Barren Earth, it’s a surprise to hear how loosely he fell into the discipline, and how humbly he assesses his talents.
“My mother says I sang horribly as a child, that’s all I know!” Jón laughs. “In my teens I started really digging metal, but I wanted to try and do something as a participant, not just a listener. I couldn’t play anything, all I could try to do was sing. I never really had an ambition for being a singer, but I got the taste for it! So it’s developed through Hamferð. I’m not trained, I don’t have the best techniques or control. Hopefully I’ll pull myself together and get some proper coaching!”
Aside from continued improvement, have the band yet thought where they’ll go next, now this trilogy is complete? Theodor shakes his head. “There are lots of ideas, but we haven’t formalised the direction,” he says. “You can sit and philosophise, but then you start writing and stuff just happens. It’s important that the process feels natural.”
“We’ve built a sound that really captures what we’ve been trying to do,” Jón affirms. “It’s the best that we can sound, now we have an opportunity to see where we can push it, how far we can go from the elements while still sounding like Hamferð. Doing the same thing again and again was never something I wanted to do, so it’s about finding that balance. Continuing that good sound we’ve found, and trying to expand it.”
TÁMSINS LIKAM IS OUT ON JANUARY 12 VIA METAL BLADE