If Årabrot’s imminent new album, Who Do You Love, sounds more upbeat than its darkly portentous predecessor, The Gospel – written in the shadow of mainman Kjetil Nernes’ throat cancer, which he thankfully overcame – it’s still likely to be an unnerving, if ultimately exhilarating experience. Drawing on noise rock, post-punk and, here, even gospel, every element tends to get warped and repurposed around the wilful, insectoid intelligence of their frontman.
From the bold, buckling groove of The Dome, like some robot stumbling down a hill with a mission you can’t quite get your head around, through Sinnerman - a cover of an old African-American spiritual that’s part fiery sermon part spittle-flecked defiance of the damned - to Sons And Daughters’ male/female vocal harmony to a country rock backing, if that country was on another planet, Who Do You Love is a pilgrimage across ever-shifting yet singularly encompassing terrain composed of odd angles that meet up somewhere just outside normal, rational experience.
Who Do You Love is due for release on September 7 via Pelagic Records, but for those of who want an itch you can’t scratch, we have an exclusive stream of the album in all its psych-peeling glory. Frontman Kjetil Nernes has this to say about his latest opus:
“I walk 47 miles of barbed wire
I use a cobra-snake for a necktie
I got a brand new house on the roadside
Made from rattlesnake hide
I got a brand new chimney made on top
Made out of a human skull
Now come on take a walk with me
And tell me, who do you love?”
Ponder that as you enter the weird and wonderful world of Who Do You Love below!
Årabrot play The Dome, London on November 2, and at Damnation Festival in Leeds on November 3
Check out Årabrot's Facebook page here
And pre-order Who Do You Love here!
