Berlin’s Occvlta slay ravenously infectious, eternally doomed black metal like doing so both alleviates and sustains their curse. Their debut album, Night Without End, comes out in less than a month, although brothers Torm (drums) and Hord (vocals) have played together in Occvlta for over a decade. A third brother, Vrgh, quit the band before the first live show, and Occvlta’s friends, Rott and Aas, have played guitar and bass ever since.
Despite the abundance of time it took to manifest, Night Without End brims with a raw fervor. Riffs tactless in their confrontational simplicity attack almost always slowly, menacingly. Emboldened by an ensanguined power. Each of these nine songs is played with the mastery of a veteran band because while Occvlta may have avoided the studio they did make their presence known throughout Europe as deliverers of an intense and bewitching live performance.
“When we started the band Vrgh and me had the vision to create an atmosphere like on Panzerfaust,” explains Occvlta’s vocalist, Hord. “There is a lot of doom present on that record. In 2007 there were not many bands playing that style, and those who did—we thought we could do it better. We know we can’t play very well, but we do have more passion and a vision. Occvlta challenges us to deliver only the best and most authentic music we can, that is why we gained a pretty good reputation for our shows.”
Torm, Occvlta’s drummer, adds: “None of the songs were created like ‘it has to have 2 fast and one slow part.’ Within the five years we collected a lot ideas, and sometimes one idea was a whole song, sometimes it was just single riffs, and we had to put them together like a puzzle. Of course we think a lot about what emotions we wanna create, but we never had music lessons in school or something like that. But a few years back I started to get into film scoring and sound design. In a way writing that Night Without End was like creating a film score for what happened in Switzerland and Norway during ‘84 and ‘95.”
“There is that famous quote from Mozart: The silences between the notes is as important as the music itself. That rounds it all up,” says Hord. “Timing and groove is a lot more important in our understanding of music than technical skills.”
Occvlta will tour Europe in the coming weeks with Norway’s preeminent black thrashers, Aura Noir. Says Hord: “Tour starts on May 19 and ends at Live Evil Berlin. We are not playing that fest, though, since we will play Berlin only a few weeks later in June together with Linnéa Olsson’s new band Maggot Heart.”
“Last summer our booker asked us about a tour to promote the album, and we discussed a few bands to ask to join us, but none of them had time or they were working on new albums. The other day Linnéa was talking about Aura Noir just having finished recording a new album, so we thought why not ask them?! We supported them a few years ago, and knew they liked our band, and obviously we are big fans.”
To execute the cover art for Night Without End, but, strangely enough, before the first song was ever written, Occvlta recruited Norwegian artist Sebastian Rusten. The intelligence of that decision speaks for itself. If the cover seems too obscure, look closely. It’s brilliant, but naming it would be dispelling it. Simply gaze deeply as you give yourself over to this exclusive stream of Night Without End in all its glorious entirety.
Night Without End comes out June 9th on vinyl from Electric Assault and on Cd from Dying Victims. Check the dates below for your chance to witness Occvlta with Aura Noir.
