Kalandra unveil final single ‘A Ship Has Left the Shore’ ahead of new album release

Norwegian alternative rock band Kalandra have released their final single ‘A Ship Has Left the Shore’ ahead of their upcoming third album The Other Side on 13th November via By Norse Music.

Stream the single here: https://bfan.link/a-ship-has-left-the-shore

The Other Side is available on black vinyl, limited edition coloured vinyl, digibook and on all digital platforms, pre-order here: https://bynorsestore.com/en/bnm-pre-orders

‘A Ship Has Left the Shore’ is about losing someone dear to you. Based on an idea by guitarist / keyboardist Jogeir Daae Mæland, and the lyrics were written by Jogeir and vocalist Katrine Stenbekk as a response to the death of a close family friend. The song takes its time to unfold and gradually builds towards its destination, asking the listener to be patient and attentive. There is a quietness to the way it carries its grief, leaving space for the emotions to reveal themselves rather than presenting everything at once.

The band comment: 

“Much of the album explores what happens as we drift off to sleep – the space between consciousness and dreams, and the worlds we encounter when we let go. A Ship Has Left the Shore takes us somewhere else entirely: to the other side of life, and to the profound question of how we cope with death and the absence of those we love.”

On the new album, Kalandra explore and follow a series of vivid and recurring dreams over the past few years. Vocalist and song writer Katrine Stenbekk, together with band mate Jogeir Daae Mæland, began exploring the world of dream analysis. Keeping a notebook by the bed, they started writing down fragments of dreams the moment they woke. Those scattered images, emotions, and subconscious narratives, became the foundation for a new collection of songs. 

Kalandra have recently announced their biggest headliner tour in Europe to date, with special guest singer-songwriter Finnegan Tui from New Zealand. The 2027 tour starts on 26th February in Cologne (DE) and ends 27th March in Amsterdam (NL). A full list of confirmed dates can be found below.

Tickets are on sale HERE

Also catch them next festival summer in Finland at Ankea Festival 2027!

The dream world has inspired many great works of art over the centuries. The phantasmagorical terrain inhabited by Lewis Carroll, Salvador Dali and David Lynch is where we now find Scandinavian alt-prog-folk artisans Kalandra, whose elegant blend of Nordic pop savvy and dark atmospheric rock has been a developing sensation for 15 years. Formed while the core members were studying at Paul McCartney‘s Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, their remarkably assured 2020 debut album The Line – over 54 million streams and counting – was followed by 2022’s immersive video game soundtrack Kingdom Two Crowns: Norse Lands. In 2024, their captivatingly majestic A Frame Of Mind album powerfully affirmed Kalandra‘s ascendancy – as did their sold-out headline show at Oslo’s 1300-capacity Rockefeller venue earlier this year. Their proven genius for weaving ethereal melodies into raw and eerie musical landscapes makes them a perfect fit for a concept album about dreaming, as we are presented with on The Other Side. 

Determining the theme before writing began, the band started ‘dream journalling’: jotting down their nocturnal visions and working them into songs. “It’s been very helpful to write down my dreams,” affirms singer Katrine. “It definitely affected how I wrote lyrics. I would love to do this again, have some sort of loose concept, it brings the record together.“

“Knowing the theme was dreaming was helpful to me musically too,” adds guitarist Florian. “We could have these dreamy effects in there. I feel most of the songs have nightmarish or dreamy parts, one way or another. There are still a lot of different themes here though, there’s folklore, current events, introspective stuff, life and death… Everything can fit into dreams lyrically speaking, it’s just life, it’s all-encompassing.” 

Kalandra have long since settled into their own versatile musical identity, embracing effective contrasts between shimmering joy and aching melancholy, sounding atavistically ancient but stylishly contemporary, otherworldly but firmly rooted in woodland soil. Kalandra‘s open-minded, open-hearted signature sound may take in several reference points, but it remains impervious to easy categorisation. Freely cited inspirations on The Other Side‘s heavy guitar quotient include Alice In Chains and Bring Me The Horizon, while neoclassical legends Dead Can Dance, Norwegian electro-alt-rockers Pyke and Oslo ‘doomgaze’ unit Leonov also made their mark on Kalandra‘s creative psyche. Even so, this is a band that will always obey their own singular muse:

“To me it’s about trying to write something I haven’t heard before,” says Florian. “That’s not to say it hasn’t been done! But if I haven’t heard it before, then it piques my interest.“

Line-up:
Katrine Ødegård Stenbekk – Vocals
Jogeir Daae Mæland – Guitar, Keyboard
Florian Bernhard Döderlein Winter – Guitar
Oskar Johnsen Rydh – Drums