Swedish black metal act Cirkeln unveiled new track ‘The Witch Bell’

Cirkeln the black-metal project of the Stockholm-based underground musician known as Våndarr today unveils another from track his third album “The Primitive Covenant”, which is set to be released on November 3rd via True Cult Records.

Titled “The Witch Bell”, this new song is now playing at Heavy Blog Is Heavy, who had this to say about it “At times, it feels like early Metallica before twisting into the haggard and abrasive second wave black metal sounds at the core of Cirkeln’s sound.”

Says Våndarr:

“Writing this song was probably the most fun I’ve ever had writing for Cirkeln. Usually, the process is quite laborious and takes a long time. There´s rarely a spark of inspiration that then flow naturally into the recording process. But, with the Witch Bell I knew I wanted to take a rawer approach to writing and recording. At that point I knew the mission of the record was to strip away and get down to the basics. I set up the recording as close to a live scenario as I possibly could in my living room-based studio. This meant that the drums were laid down first and then I tracked all the guitars and all the bass in one take for each instrument. There was no editing or refining of the recordings after the fact. There were rarely even second takes. I think this gives the song a sense of unapologetic ugliness and momentum. There was no click track, so the pace of the instruments is entirely dictated by listening to the drums. It’s not the tightest Cirkeln track – but to me it’s the one that sounds the most alive. I also wanted to experiment with incorporating a different vocal technique and style on this album – and the Witch Bell is one of the best examples of this. To me, this is the point where Cirkeln doesn´t allow itself to be confined by one idea of what Black Metal is. There’s more than one shade to darkness.”

On the follow-up to his critically second album “A Song To Sorrow”,Våndarr is once paying homage to the forefathers of black-metal, yet this time “The Primitive Covenant” sees the Swedish musician incorporating more elements of old-school thrash-metal, primeval death-metal and even punk. Pre-orders are now available here. 

Listen to leading single “Garden of Thorns” here.