In the studio with Imminence: “It’s going to sound quite different to what people might expect”

After the enormous global success of 2024’s The Black, Imminence returned to Sweden where frontman Eddie Berg and guitarist Harald Barrett began building a whole new world around themselves. And it’s massive. They’ve been working with film score composers and script writers, too. The mission? “We asked ourselves, ‘How can we make this even bigger?’”

Harald Barrett: “We started writing instantly after The Black was done. It quickly turned into something else, though – something quite different from the previous album. It’s me and Eddie who’ve been writing the whole thing, and we’ve been recording in the same studio as before.”

Eddie Berg: “We were very inspired and still writing songs when we went into the studio for The Black. We had a deadline, and we went in with the songs that we had. But we never felt like we were finished. So, we had this bridge phase where we continued writing. Two of those songs that came out from that ended up on the deluxe edition, and two of them we saved, and then we just kept going.”

Harald: “The cycle of The Black shaped how this new album sounds and what the message is. We wanted to step it up. We were very motivated to write an album that takes us to the next step, because The Black really put us on the map globally. With this album, I felt like there was a very big urge to take that to a new place, to bring Imminence to a new level, to go even further…”

Eddie: “I feel like it’s a reaction to writing a record like The Black, because we allowed ourselves to go down a certain path and write with a certain style in mind. For me, this whole process has been a reaction to that, and about trying to do something different this time. It’s good to make yourself uncomfortable sometimes. Maybe a lot of people expected us to write another record like The Black, but that’s the last thing we wanted to do.”

Harald: “We had some external help. We worked a bit with Drew Fulk [aka Wzrd Bld, who’s worked with the likes of twenty one pilots and A Day To Remember] for additional production. It’s the first time we’ve involved anyone else in the creative process. We also worked with a film score producer, a composer, which is the first time we’ve done that. Imminence’s music is very classically oriented, it has a lot of string elements, and this really got elevated by bringing somebody in who actually works with orchestras. I think it’s going to sound quite different to what people might expect, but at the same time it’s still very Imminence.”

Harald: “Everything around this got reflected in our desire to really make this album something bigger and greater than whatever we’ve done before. The development of the world of the new album and the visual landscape around it, the story behind it and the symbolism, it’s on another scale. Nothing we’ve done before even comes close. I don’t think it comes close to what anybody has done. It’s just been so big, this whole project is huge, and we have a lot of people involved. We’re working with script writers and everything for this upcoming cycle. We have a huge creative team on board to create what this next chapter is going to be.”

Eddie: “We’ve always been a very cinematic band, so it feels natural that when we’re taking the music to the next level, we want to take every other aspect to the next level as well. It’s about that conversation where we ask, ‘How can we make this even bigger?’”

Eddie: “I don’t think it’s going to be unfamiliar for fans of Imminence, but it is a bit further away from our previous record. Maybe people will recognise some elements of [2019 album] Turn The Light On in the new songs, but it’s still a new evolution.”

Harald: “I would say that it’s a bit more of a mature version of our sound, certainly with the songwriting itself. I dare to say that it’s better written than before and we’ve improved the composition of the songs. The material itself is stronger, and the sound is a step away from what we’ve done before, but the essence is still there. The album will have all the elements that you associate with Imminence, all the really heavy and brutal stuff, but also so much more. And I think it presents all of that in a new way.”

Keep an eye on Kerrang! for updates on Imminence's new album. Catch them in the UK and Europe next January and February.

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