Astral Sleep unveil the first single and title track from their new album »We Are Already Living In The End Of Times«!

Tellus, Finland based psychedelic doom metal band Astral Sleep return with their new album, »We Are Already Living In The End Of Times«, set to release on April 21st, 2023 via Saarni Records.

Listen to the first single and title track »We Are Already Living In The End Of Times«!

Tracklist:
01. We Are Already Living In The End Of Times
02. Torment In Existence
03. Invisible Flesh
04. The Legacies
05. Time Is
06. Status Of The Soul

Astral Sleep are back with new album, as Saarni Records proudly presents: »We Are Already Living In The End Of Times« (out on 21. April 2023).

With the previous album »Astral Doom Musick« (Saarni Records 2020), Astral Sleep established their accurate genre definition as the namesake of the said album. With the new, 4th full-length the band continues to evolve within these musical terms, but this time with a direction towards more doom and gloom, less astral and magical.

»We Are Already Living In The End Of Times« witnesses the apocalypse as it manifests, and explores the thoughts and feelings that emerge in the face of the doom. Why did this happen? What can we do about it? How should we feel about it? Should we care? Does it even matter? The album takes it path through powerful scenes of destruction, loss, and despair, but also of deliverance, self-realization, and existential enlightenment. The new album’s gargantuan soundscape resonates the immensity of the apocalypse portrayed. Beneath the waves of crushing guitars, rumble the drums and the bass, like volcanoes that erupt under oceans, and above glide the ethereal lead guitars and synths, as powerful vocals shatter the skies and tremble the earth.

The cover art for the album was made by the renowned artist Mark Cooper, an insanely talented painter of tons of album-covers. This epic piece depicts an apocalyptic event where the last concert ever to happen on earth is about to take place, running on the last fumes of a broken-down factory.

Release schedule:

• 17. February 2023 the first single from the album releases on all streaming services. Album pre-order becomes available.
• 21. April 2023 the full album releases and is available for purchase in digital, CD, and vinyl formats. The second single is released in streaming services on the same date.
• The remaining four songs from the album are each independently released in the streaming services on monthly basis, until the sixth song releases in August 2023.

The first single-release from the album, the opening track »We Are Already Living In The End Of Times« explores the idea that the end, destruction, and death of the society and the world as we know it, are happening right now. We are all part of it. This idea is mirrored by the concepts of heaven and hell, as they are very popular human-made concepts that feed on the idolization of the past, abandonment of the present, and active degradation and neglect of things to come, the future.

Musically the song starts with an initiation, testing the listeners’ endurance and patience in the vein of some classic sludge albums that really embrace the noise and the feedback. It is also a sonic equivalent of living in the modern times. The song eventually starts with riffs that could demolish buildings, in contrast to the haunting and vulnerable walls of vocal chants that preach the end. Eventually the song gets heavier, bigger, messier and noisier, until finally resolving into a complete noise chaos before fading into the emptiness.

The songwriting process was very typical to Astral Sleep. There was an almost complete song from way back in the day, written by the original lead guitarist Rolle. In order to finish and reinforce the song, new riffs and musical ideas were added to it so that it evolved into a completely new song­, which eventually continued to evolve into two different songs. Both of those new songs were recorded for the new album, but the first one was dropped and the other was finalized into this album-opening title track.

Biography:

Astral Sleep hails from Finland, Tellus. The group has wreaked havoc on the metal genre since 2005. Astral Sleep’s music fuses various musical styles into an unique entity dubbed “Astral Doom Musick”: The boundaries of different sub-genres of doom are ripped apart, mingled with pieces of jazz, psych-rock, noise, and various styles of metal, and sown back together into the monstrosities that they are. Astral Sleep’s mission is finding eternal bliss in the world on its inevitable trajectory towards doom.

More info: linktr.ee/astralsleep

For fans of YOB, Crowbar, Pallbearer, Solitude Aeturnus, David Lynch, Nobuo Uematsu…

Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well