Hailing from Finland, ALKUHARMONIA KANTAJA reveal  a new glimpse into their sophomore offering, “Melas Khole”, to be released on June 26th via I, Voidhanger Records (https://metalodyssey.8merch.com). The album was mixed by S.Korpituli and mastered by S.D at The Empty Hall Studios. Quest vocals on “The Redeemer” and “Echoes” were performed by Galgenvot (Wrang, Sarastus) and Anzillu (Order of Nosferat, Iku-Turso,…). All album artworks were crafted by Odilon Redon, with cassette layout by S.Korpituli.

It was 2021 when Finnish band ALKUHARMONIA KANTAJA (in English, “One Who Carries The Original Harmony”) debuted with “Shadowy Peripherals,” evoking the spirit of the Norwegian avant-garde black metal movement of the 90s – musically and thematically a highly unstable emotional and psychological space where things feel both intimate and unreal at the same time. Five years later, the original trio has morphed into a quartet, but the inspiration hasn’t changed.

In “Melas Khole” there is a recurring sense of collapse, wandering, transformation and ecstatic ruin, unfolding as a sequence of visions moving through emotional and spiritual twilight zones where identities dissolve, moral structures decay, and strange forms of liberation begin to emerge through ruin itself.

“Emotionally, the work is melancholic but restless,” says singer/guitarist J. Usurper (KHANUS). “However, melancholy here is not passive despair, but movement through psychological ruins toward something still unknown and primordial. It becomes a transformative force – a silent acceptance, a descent inward and a confrontation with the self.”

Musically, ALKUHARMONIAN KANTAJA follows in the footsteps of VED BUENS ENDE and FLEURETY, among others. But all is seen through a very personal lens, which involves the listener to the point of dragging him slowly but inexorably into a whirlwind of existential reflections and surreal emotional landscapes where inner and outer realities begin to merge. Even at its darkest, “Melas Khole” never fully collapses into silence or despair. There is always movement beneath it – yearning, transformation, combustion, fracture, or rebirth – and it is precisely this instability that keeps it alive.

“It is a condition where heightened awareness and hidden revelation begin to surface through loss, yearning, contradiction, and decay,” J. Usurper concludes. “It continuously raises the question of whether transcendence is divine, demonic, self-destructive, or all three simultaneously.”

Tracklist:
1.Culprit Sunsets (To Chew on Darkness) 04:22
2.Purple Storms (The Desert Unites and Cloaks the World) 04:19
3.Twinhearts (Fall from Grace Again) 04:52
4.6th of Senses (The Shape of Unknown) 04:16
5.Melankolia (The Silent Acceptance) 02:14
6.The Redeemer (Smudged Flesh Withers) 06:21
7.Revelations (Gone in Remembrance) 05:03
8.Echoes (At the End of the Rainbow) 04:04
9.Hollow Minds Collide (In Ominous Wellbeing) 05:20

Delve into “Purple Storms (The Desert Unites and Cloaks the World)” below

ALKUHARMONIAN KANTAJA is:
J.Usurper – Nubile Waves of Consciousness in Unforeseen Strings Attached
S.Redeemer – Mr. Blastphemous & the Philosophy of Impact on Hollow Matter
D.Harbinger – Peripheral Breaths of Moral Grey into the Unstable Weather of Thoughts
A.Deceiver – Subterranean Presence into the Abstract Register of Existential Distance