HENGET Make Debut Album ‘Beyond North Star’ Available For Streaming In Its Entirety
May 16th, 2023
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Finnish progressive black metal project Henget issue debut full-length studio album Beyond North Star on May 19th, 2023 through Season Of Mist.
The outing can be streamed in its entirety via YouTube below.
After hesitating with the name Henkivallat (‘Spiritual Realms’), which ended up being using as a song title instead, the name Henget was chosen because of its double meaning as it can be translated both as ‘Life’ but also ‘Spirits’, “a perfect name for an occult band” reckoned guitarist Jesse J. Heikkinen.
Vocals were recorded at Studio Sampolaaris in Tampere, Finland. “When I got in the studio to do the vocals, I only had various notes, sometimes hastily written on a small piece of paper and more or less some kind of loose structures to go with it,” frontman King Aleijster de Satan commented. “Most of them I gathered in between 2016 and 2019 after, let’s say experimenting quite a bit. I admit natural psychedelics and other shamanic methods influenced me a lot to reach another level of consciousness, besides my long interest towards the occult and mysticism. Those weren’t meant to get lost into but instead to be used as mere tools to help me opening new doors in my brain, a bit like a shaman would do when engaged in a ritual to reach a trance like of state. That’s also why I booked a two weeks session just for the vocals: I needed that amount of space to really dive in my subconscious. Overall, that was one of most intense recording experience I ever had but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone because the toll you have to pay once it’s done is pretty heavy.”
Originally, King Aleijster de Satan and Jesse J. Heikkinen planned to unite in Saturnian Mist but then, Heikkinen “had to move to another city and it made things too complicated. But we still wanted to work together as he is probably the best songwriter I know. And since I had this idea for this other thing where I knew I wanted to push the limits and go over the edge in terms of songwriting, I needed somebody of his calibre.”
“Indeed, Aleijster approached during summer 2021,” confirms the multi-instrumentalist. “He had a quite clear vision of what kind of concept he wanted to do lyrically speaking for a long time. It did coincide with my own desire to express something personal yet aggressively, an urge I hadn’t felt in a long time. Based on his background, we agreed this should happen within some kind of black metal frame but without still paying attention to much conventions or rules. I was given free rein to do whatever I felt like and I quickly realized I wanted it to be quite intuitive while making sure the music would be as crazy as possible, like some typhoon swallowing everything in its path… So using mostly vintage instrumentation, I recorded most of the music by myself in my own studio, pushing the button ‘rec’ and then totally letting myself go, following Aleijster ‘automatic writing’ method and ending up with some pretty interesting result.”
Drums were recorded at Space Junk Studio in Tampere, Finland. All other parts besides vocals and drums were recorded at Beyond North Star in Salo, Finland, meanwhile.
Production and sound engineering was handled Jesse J. Heikkinen and King Aleijster de Satan, with the exceptiion of sound engineering for the drums, which was taken care of by Kimmo Nyyssönen. Mixing and engineering was the responsibility of Beyond North Star Studio and Jesse J. Heikkinen.
Mastering was overseen by Wavecrawler Audio and Teemu Iso-Kulmala.
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Cover artwork was designed by M.T. Salminen.
The track listing is as follows:
01. ‘Dive’
02. ‘I Am Them’
03. ‘Henkivallat’
04. ‘The Great Spiral’
05. ‘Beyond North Star’
06. ‘Lovi’
07. ‘Nouse’
08. ‘The Chalice Of Life And Death’
Beyond North Star’s recording line-up was as follows:
Santtu “King Aleijster de Satan” Kainulainen (vocals, Saturnian Mist / King Satan)
Jesse J. Heikkinen (guitars and additional keyboards, ex-King Satan)
Pálmi R. Jóhannsson (bass)
Ville J. Rissanen (drums, Saturnian Mist)
Lasse J. Launimaa (keyboards, Thyrane)
Created by frontman King Aleijster de Satan, music videos were filmed for the title track and the songs ‘I Am Them’ and ‘Henkivallat’. All three clips can be viewed below.
Promotional photograph by Joonas Juntunen.
