Belonging to the isolated Artic metropolis of Tromsø, Norway’s Heave Blood & Die are a radical prospect for equally radical times. A product of perpetual global chaos, the unyielding anti-capitalist group dynamically amalgamate kraut rock, post-punk, post-rock and fervent outsider dynamism to critique the societal ills of our current eco-political system. Searing, headstrong and opinionated in manner both urgent and righteously required, the group’s latest offering see’s them articulating such appraisals in their most expressive form to date. Released via Fysisk Format, Heave Blood & Die’s latest record Post People see’s the collective documenting their ideology in a manner that’s reminiscent of a plethora of bands whilst being utterly unique and unparalleled. Affluent in substance and colossal in scope, the record is a steadfast and headstrong statement of inclusive intent that’s striking in every sense of the word. With Post People out now, we got in touch with guitarist and vocalist Karl Pedersen to discover the stores and meanings of the record, track by track. Radio Silence “Securely seated in the shade of a great force, screened from the brutalities of life, centuries spent in a castle of clouds. a lust for great truth arises. A leap of faith into the real world, which appears to be a never ending maelstrom of atrocities, hurled into a series of NEWS, flashes of the most devastating situations humankind has faced.” “‘Radio Silence’ is a yearning wish to transcend violence and a hopeless hope to disintegrate all authority that can’t be justified.” “This is the song we’ve held on to longest for this record, it was written probably two years ago and is the only song from this record (in the compositional state it is on the record) that has been with us on tour. When we were recording the song we scoured the studio for gear, I found this weird electrical sitar/lap steel thing, and by messing around with it ended up being the foundation of the song.” Kawanishi Aeroplane “Throwing ourselves into the shoes of a child separated from its caretakers in a country torn apart by world spanning affairs. Wandering through adolescence, dreaming of a world in a blooming state, sick of humankind’s self destructing tendencies.” “I wrote the spine of the song the morning before our last rehearsal before going to the studio. We were borrowing our friends rehearsal space by the pier in Tromsø. I love that place, it’s dirty and gross, just like a rehearsal place should be.. I was listening a lot to Neutral Milk Hotel`s record In An Aeroplane Over The Sea, and reading Empire of The Sun by JG Ballard when I was writing the lyrics for these songs, I think Kawanishi Aeroplane is one of the songs that most heavily draws from these inspirations.” Metropolitan Jam “Standing with your feet planted in the ground on the edge of a continental shelf, you let yourself go as your sub-urban home lay in ruins. You take a multi-track slide down the continental slope down into a submarine canyon, past seamounts and you have a safe cushioned landing in the abyssal plain.” “It’s sort of the opposite of ‘Everything Is Now’. I wrote the song at half the speed of what we have today, a real slow burner, I had these long verses depicting car crashes and it was all about building as much tension as possible to achieve a huge release. I was really happy about the song as I had written it. For fun we tried playing it in double tempo, all of the sudden we had a full blown NEU!esque kraut-rock song, it stuck. The vocals were improvised (we did the long verses about collisions at first, but the track was so energetic and needed something clean, simple and not over explanatory) while our producer was messing around with the time of the tape echo. It’s strange to think about how different this record would have played out if we would have kept ‘Metropolitan Jam’ as this dark and dreary “posty” tune.” True Believer “Casting a gaze at the world post Reagan, it’s shocking to see how easy people can be manipulated into believing something that isn’t true. Using people as puppets, creating diversion and thriving in the chaos and lies created by them. Like Germany leading up to WW2, we are sitting across the Atlantic watching it unfold in the “leading democracy” USA.” “The have had is more dangerous than the never had. A new dawn is rising, and the possible outcome terrifies me.” “This is sort of the younger sibling of Radio Silence for us, as it was written around the same time. Come to think of it, I believe we wrote those songs because we needed to fill out the set on Roskilde, I think we had to play a set of 60 minutes and we only had 45 minutes of songs we still enjoyed playing and could vouch for. The song was quite different back then, we changed it up quite a bit for the recording, I believe it was more “post” back then, contrary to today’s modern kraut vibe.” Everything is Now “Alexander the Great at his death bed, Julius Caesar is assassinated, The crusade for Jerusalem is marching, Ghengis Khan is moving west, Franz Ferdinand is being shot, Little boy dropped over Nagasaki, The Cuban Missile Crisis and World Trade Center falling, all at the same time. The concept of time is simply an illusion made up of human memories, everything that has ever been and ever will be is happening RIGHT NOW.” “‘Everything Now’ was never planned to be stretched out as it is, it just happened late one night in the studio. It was just me, Marie Sofie and our producer Ariel in the control room way after bedtime. Ariel stretched the song out in Pro Tools, me and Marie Sofie (Langeland Mikkelsen, synth) went apeshit and destructive as we are we went for it, consolidated it! The rest of the band woke up to a big surprise when we listened back to the track after our session at night.” Continental Drifting “Shivering with anxiety by the thought of annihilation of humankind due to Environmental degradation, we are thrown back in time and everything is diffused. Roman foot soldiers marching in the financial district of New York as the Twin Towers fall.” “I like to imagine Continental Drifting as metal music in a parallel universe where Bee Gees started the genre and not Black Sabbath. It’s a fuzzed out disco song!” “We spent a long time trying to figure out how to do the end part of the song, we made all these “rules” on what would trigger the different outcomes of the riff, we do these sorts of things quite a bit, I guess you could call it a human probability parameter (or a lack of musical theory). it felt like a waste as it only loops around twice on the final recording. The guitar solo at the end was highly accidental, Benjamin (Nerheim, guitar) was showing off his pedals and he was flung out into a feedback, and then he starts shredding over it as he is stuck in this loop. Luckily I was sitting at the desk and got to hit a record while the magic was still happening.” Geometrical Shapes “A migraine sucking you into a loophole, texts of exploitation turns into obscure shapes and all you can do is breathe in and breathe out. Gravity warps, in one universe you are incinerated and in the other you are unharmed. Time ceases to make sense, laws of physics are altered, space and time no longer apply.” “After finishing this krauty, noisy and weirdo piece of music in a 5/4 time signature, we ran to the beach and cooled down with a swim in the ocean. It was pouring down with rain.” Post People “Lunged into a not too distant future where society as we know it has ceased to exist, we experience flashes of the world we knew before. Trying to keep grounded by repeating catholic verses we never had any relationship with, to no avail. We are lunged right back into an never ending altered space.” “This song is all about tension and release, build it up and let it go. In some regard all music is about tension and release, as however intense a piece of music is, at some point it’s going to end and you will get your long awaited release. The instrumental ending of the song is the mantra of post people. It was obvious Post People was to be the last song of the record, the synth melodies, dubbed by a Mellotron, shoots you off the pinnacle of this sequence of music and into an neverending melancholic free fall.” “Thanks for letting me run through our record with you, I hope you enjoy it almost as much as I do myself.” Post People is out now via Fysisk Format. Purchase the album here.