UK-based saxophone-driven, instrumental, avant-garde/post-black metal eccentrics Five The Hierophant have announced a new album, Apeiron. While the album will see the light of day on 18 October via Agonia Records, its first single, "Initiatory Sickness", is already out.
A European tour will coincide with the release of Apeiron, starting on 11 October, with support by Thantifaxath and Inter Arma (see the dates below).
Five The Hierophant continues to walk the winding path - further down towards within and further out towards new horizons. Refusing to ascribe to a singular style, it blends black/doom, psychedelic, ambient, experimental and jazz elements into one syncretic trip. Apeiron is a hypnotic, hallucinatory experience with a heavy emphasis on the dark atmosphere, cinematic dreamscapes, and ritualistic trance-inducing sounds. The production, without a doubt, is a step up from the previous instalment, Through Aureate Void. The band keeps expanding the use of atypical instruments, such as horns, trumpets, gongs, bells, violins, skull shakers, ritual drums and other tools, helping to capture the haunting spirit of the music.
Five The Hierophant comments: "After a few years of wait, and a lineup change, we are happy to present you our new album. We feel like it's a very Five The Hierophant album, set within the specific sound we managed to forge, but with a fair bit of new ideas, twists and turns. In our opinion, it's more trippy and hypnotic, but less monotonous than the previous work. Once again, this is an all-instrumental work, without any samples or spoken word this time. The album is called 'Apeiron', meaning boundless in Greek, which reflects the atmosphere of the record very well".
Apeiron was recorded and mixed between summer and autumn 2023. It was engineered and mixed by Sam Thredder at Cro's Nest in south London. Haldor Grungerg performed the mastering of the album at Satanic Audio (Azarath, Behemoth). The front cover contains a painting by Odd Nerdrum, with his kind permission. Link
Five The Hierophant tour dates:
11/10 NL Nijmegen - Soulcrusher*
12/10 DE Dresden - TBA*
13/10 PL Krakow - Alchemia / Soulstone Gathering *
14/10 PL Warsaw - Klub Hydrozagadka#
15/10 PL Poznan - Klub pod Minogą #
16/10 DE Berlin - Neue Zukunft / Unlimited Sonic Use*
17/10 FR Nancy - MDE artem*
18/10 BE Antwerp - Desertfest Belgium
19/10 SCO Glasgow - Sword of Damocles Festival
*with Thantifaxath
# with Inter Arma & Thantifaxath
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"You know, the music and songs just come, and we don't distance ourselves from the music that comes out." - Jyrki 69
"We only make an album when we feel genuinely inspired. You can't just say, "OK, I'm going to record a new album", because without inspiration, it would be boring." - Gregor Mackintosh
"We were outsiders, and nobody knew what the fuck was going on. We just listened to this extreme music that nobody else liked, and that made us very strong..." - Mikael Stanne
"There's much more detail in our music now than 20 years ago. It's also much easier nowadays because you can do many things at home." - Morten Lybecker
