For Brymir, What We Leave Behind has been a long time coming. The band’s fifth album took roughly four years to write and produce, considerably longer than the two-year window they had initially hoped for. Health issues, injuries, touring schedules and shared studio resources with Battle Beast repeatedly pushed the process further into the future. At the time, those delays were understandably frustrating. In retrospect, however, Jarkko and Viktor can see something positive in the extra time.

“It did give us more time to refine the album, and I think even a couple of songs came to be that wouldn’t have come otherwise,” Viktor explains. “So I’m actually, at this point, happy that it was postponed.”

That patience has also given Brymir the opportunity to reach a point where they feel increasingly confident in their own musical identity. ‘What We Leave Behind’ is the band’s fourth album produced themselves, and that accumulated experience has changed the way they approach their arrangements. “We know how to make something sound like Brymir,” Viktor says. That knowledge, rather than restricting them, has opened up more room for experimentation. The band has deliberately allowed more space into the arrangements, moving between sections where the band itself takes the lead and moments where the orchestral elements expand the sound.

The result is a record that feels more deliberately constructed. Instead of filling every possible space with orchestration, Brymir have become more conscious of dynamics and contrast. “It feels more controlled,” Viktor says. “What we wanted it to sound like, it turned out like we wanted it to turn out, instead of writing a whole bunch of songs, going to the studio, and then just hoping that this kind of sounds good.”

That greater control is particularly interesting considering just how dark the material became. The darkness of ‘What We Leave Behind’ wasn’t something the band simply decided to pursue for aesthetic reasons. Instead, it grew naturally out of the four years in which the album was created. “All the music and lyrics come from a place of honesty,” Jarkko explains. “If we try to make something that doesn’t resonate with us on an emotional level, then usually those songs end up just staying on the drawing board forever.” The album therefore became a way of processing difficult experiences rather than simply documenting them. The mythological imagery that has long been part of Brymir‘s identity proved particularly useful for this.

For Viktor, mythology offers a way to express enormous emotions without having to reduce them to literal descriptions. For Jarkko, it provides something even more personal: a way to talk about experiences that might be too private to explain directly. “You can write about very personal and also private things through metaphors,” Viktor  says. “You can really honestly speak your heart without it necessarily [meaning] the listener being able to know exactly what went down.” Jarkko sums up the paradox particularly well: mythology can be “a mask that helps you to be more true.”

At the same time, Brymir don’t want that imagery to dictate a single interpretation. The listener can simply take the mythology, enormous concepts and cinematic soundscapes and create their own picture from them. The same principle extends to the album’s increasingly cinematic musical language. Viktor‘s work in film sound design has influenced the way he thinks about storytelling through sound, but the influence goes beyond simply adding orchestral elements to a metal song. “The thing I’ve learned most from that, that I can apply to my music writing, is the storytelling aspect, and better sense of dramaturgy, and also how to convey feelings with sound which is not tonal or melodic,” he explains.

Soundscapes and atmospheric elements are now increasingly part of the songwriting itself rather than something added afterwards. The band has also experimented with a different sonic palette, using more synth-driven textures instead of simply attempting to reproduce an orchestral sound. That approach contributes to the album’s broader cinematic and somewhat sci-fi character, while still leaving room for Brymir‘s core sound.

And then, after all that darkness, comes ‘How Much Is The Fish?’

The Scooter cover might initially seem like the least likely thing to find at the end of a record dealing with regret, war, existential dread and humanity’s future. In reality, however, it makes considerably more sense once Brymir explain how it came about. Viktor had been thinking about covering the song for around a decade. Growing up in the 1990s, the band members were already familiar with Scooter, and the song was something they genuinely enjoyed. Once the opportunity arose, transforming it into a Brymir song came surprisingly naturally. The bigger question was where it belonged. “The album itself ends in such a dark, dark place,” Jarkko says. “It almost needs a sort of mint refresher at the end.”

That idea also connects directly to Brymir‘s live identity. The band has developed a particularly playful relationship with their audience around their fish imagery, originating from the environmental themes of ‘Voices in the Sky’ and eventually turning into an ongoing fish-plushie and mosh-pit tradition. “It may look like a publicity stunt thing,” Viktor says, “but it’s actually a song that we love, a fish thing that goes perfectly with our brand.” The cover therefore isn’t simply a punchline after a serious album. It represents another side of the band: the ability to acknowledge difficult subjects honestly while still leaving room for humour, energy and having fun together with an audience. That balance is ultimately important to what Brymir hope ‘What We Leave Behind’ can offer.

For Viktor, the album has already served that purpose personally. “I’ve been able to heal so much through this album, because I’ve been able to talk about things that have been tough for me,” he says. “And I hope that other people can find this the same kind of strength through it and maybe help them grow.” Jarkko is more cautious about telling listeners what they are supposed to find in the record. There is no single correct interpretation of the lyrics or a prescribed emotional response. If the album helps someone process something, experience catharsis or simply get something out of their system, that is enough.

And ultimately, there is an even simpler request. “The most important thing is that you guys just blast it,” Viktor says. “And I hope you love it, because we like it.”

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