Dan Franklin

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Articles

Wardruna's Einar Selvik on his Love of Ancient Instruments

Jan 22, 2025 | thequietus.com | Kez Whelan |Patrick Clarke |Dan Franklin

Following the lofty flights of 2021 album Kvitravn (White Raven), Wardruna are returning to the heart of winter with new album, Birna (She-Bear). Central to Wardruna’s sound is Einar Selvik’s fascination with instruments from the past and their uncanny ability to describe the concerns of the present. Wardruna’s music is shaped by its themes. Animism – the living soul of all nature – is a prevailing thread throughout, as well as Norse culture and much more.
A Question of Time: An In-Depth Interview With clown in London

Jan 8, 2025 | knotfest.com | Dan Franklin

All images by Harry SteelWhen Slipknot first landed on British soil in December 1999, the Millennium Dome in London’s Docklands was being prepared to host its Millennium Eve opening party. The Dome's exhibition, aspiring to be like the World's Fair, was perceived as a white elephant – an incoherent mess of British culture and values.
Good Will Hunting: Opeth on their theatrical, ‘action-packed’ new albu

Nov 25, 2024 | knotfest.com | Dan Franklin

For Fredrik Åkesson, guitarist of Opeth, new album The Last Will and Testament both completes a circle and takes the band another step forward. Its sonic palette brings Åkesson back to the start of his journey with Opeth, when he joined for 2008’s Watershed. It’s as if he has returned to the beginning and knows the place for the first time.
As Daylight Dies: Anciients on Their Long-Awaited New Album

Nov 14, 2024 | knotfest.com | Dan Franklin

Photo by ShimonIn August, after an eight-year hiatus, Canadian band Anciients released their new full length, Beyond the Reach of the Sun. More remarkable still, it’s one of the best albums of the year. It’s a monument to the breakthroughs of the 2010s, when heavy, progressive music surged in popularity. It wears its influences on its sleeve: the lush, incisive melodic thrust of Baroness’ riffs; the fluidity and sustain of Opeth’s soloing; and the off-beat creativity of Gojira’s drum patterns.
Keeping Score: An Interview With The Body

Nov 13, 2024 | thequietus.com | Kez Whelan |Patrick Clarke |Dan Franklin

“How do you exist in a world that doesn’t line up with your moral code, but also doesn’t line up with any moral code?” asks Lee Buford. His band, The Body, is less a musical project than a coping mechanism. For a quarter of a century, Buford (electronics/percussion) and Chip King (guitar/vocals) have contended with a world that doesn’t share their values by blocking it out – or crushing it – with their music.
The Sweetest Hearse: Baroness and Pallbearer Discuss Craft, Progressio

Oct 15, 2024 | knotfest.com | Dan Franklin

Photo by Ebru Yildiz2012 was a year of beginnings and endings for Pallbearer and Baroness. Pallbearer released their debut album, Sorrow and Extinction – a colossal landmark in doom metal. Singer and guitarist Brett Campbell knows its significance despite confessing to being a “train wreck” at the time: “For a lot of people Sorrow and Extinction is the Pallbearer album. It's like we peaked there.
Expanding the Circle: Blood Incantation Interviewed

Sep 30, 2024 | thequietus.com | Kez Whelan |John Doran |Dan Franklin

The uninitiated might be unaware of death metal’s renaissance. But it’s been rumbling ever louder in the caverns of the underground. Just as OGs of the scene, Cannibal Corpse and Obituary, remain active and have even upgraded their venue sizes, new forms of the subgenre are crashing through to prominence. One of these is cosmic death metal, which shirks songs about the mutilation of the human body in favour of exploring broader metaphysical questions about human existence.
SLIPKNOT 99: Biding my time until the time is right

Sep 4, 2024 | knotfest.com | Dan Franklin

When does a concert become a ritual? When does a band performing a sequence of songs morph into something communal, intuitive, and darkly magical? Ask anyone who’s been to a concert on the first leg of Slipknot’s Here Comes the Pain 25th anniversary tour and they’ll tell you: It’s during “Scissors”. The final track on Slipknot’s epochal self-titled album, “Scissors” is nothing less than a seance. During the song's recent live outings, it’s as if the band is resurrecting its past, and its demons.
Orange Goblin Interviewed

Jul 16, 2024 | thequietus.com | John Doran |Dan Franklin

In the spring of 2022, Ben Ward, singer of Orange Goblin, was granted Saruman’s wish. From Orange Goblin’s debut album, 1997’s Frequencies from Planet Ten, ‘Saruman’s Wish’ contained a message from Ward’s younger self to who he is now. The song spoke of “finding wisdom in the depths beyond our shame”. ‘Saruman’s Wish’ encapsulated Orange Goblin’s musical mission: bluesy, Sabbath-derived doom, injected with Motörhead-style accelerant.
Black Hole Son: Geezer Butler on Sabbath, Depression, the Devilish Sid

Jul 15, 2024 | knotfest.com | Dan Franklin

Photo by Ross HalfinHeavy metal was a mistake. Or, at least, was based on a misunderstanding. This view is expressed by Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler in his memoir, Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath and Beyond.