Beyond The Black: Giving Voice To Hope

When you think of the German metal scene, chances are power metal isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. But since 2015, BEYOND THE BLACK have been on a mission to change that, channelling symphonic and power metal through a knack for poppy hooks and catchy choruses that’s amassed them a dedicated following. They’ve also been incredibly prolific, with 2023’s self-titled effort being their fifth album since their debut, Songs Of Love And Death, in 2016, as well as keeping busy with a myriad of other side gigs or appearances. Naturally, we had to sit down with vocalist and band mastermind Jennifer Haben to talk about it all.

“2022 was full of new steps,” she enthuses when we ask how she’s found the past 12 months. “I went out of my comfort zone and really learned a lot.” That not only extended to covering To Hell And Back by Swedish metallers SABATON, collaborating on a re-imagining of AMARANTHE’s Make It Better (as well as completing a co-headline run with them), but Haben also found time to present the livestream of Germany’s inaugural Download Festival, as well as Wacken Open Air. Oh, and wrote an album. No biggie.

“It’s all I’m thinking about,” she laughs. No surprises there; in the last few years, she’s had plenty of time to ask the big, searching questions not just of herself but to ask them alongside her bandmates. “I was asking myself, is what I’m doing what I really want, where do I want to go, and all this stuff,” she recalls, “and we did the same with the band, asking ourselves, what is BEYOND THE BLACK, what are we talking about, and how do we sound.” Those searching questions led them down a lot of avenues, and the end result is “the most confident album we’ve ever written,” in Haben’s own emphatic words.

The decision to self-title arose from that, too; emerging from the past few years is a band that is laser-focused on where they want to go with a strong sense of who they are. Whereas 2020’s Hørizøns saw them throw everything at the wall to see what stuck (“we worked with three different producer teams and I wrote with a lot of different people,” explains Haben), Beyond The Black has a single production team again and three years of self-reflection behind it. Haben explains, “with Hørizøns, we wanted to go on a journey, find out how we want to sound, but this time we’d answered those questions and did everything with one team. That’s why it all sounds like one big picture.”

Although she describes it as one big picture, that doesn’t mean it’s one note; opener Is There Anybody Out There? addresses themes of self isolation, set to a stomping, pop hook – with a brief classical guitar interlude, of course – while Reincarnation counterpoints her soaring vocals with lower screams, and “was inspired by going through something that is holding you back from being your true self, something that makes you feel stronger and more energised when you get through it.”

Amongst all of it, she made sure to pay homage to Game Of Thrones, a favourite of hers (although she laughingly agrees with the suggestion you should ignore the TV show’s finale), not only with the name of Winter Is Coming but the wintery music video that featured ice blocks and a costume inspired by the Night’s Watch. The fantasy inspiration is practically synonymous with symphonic and power metal, another reason that Haben found her home in the genre. As she tells it, her original bands covered “everything from WHITNEY HOUSTON and AMY WINEHOUSE to AC/DC.”

It might be a far cry from where she’s at now, but to hear Haben tell it and describe their approach to writing, it’s not so surprising. Even in an album so cohesive as this, they drew in plenty of influences. For instance, “Chris [Hermsdörfer, guitar/backing vocals] loves electronic instruments and sounds,” which leads to a lot of their poppier moments or the recurring “exhale” motif in Is There Anybody Out There?.

That’s partly why she’s so fond of the music she makes now, having found a genre that allowed her to indulge these poppier influences in her writing as well as celebrating her love of things like Game Of Thrones. “I can do something super powerful, energising and emotional. I love that.” Those emotional themes tie into both the band’s name and their entire raison d’etre; she summarises their mission by saying “BEYOND THE BLACK is a band that talks about dark moments, but always with a kind of hope. That’s what we always want to show people – that there are dark moments in every single life on this earth, but know you’re not alone. There’s always hope you can get through it, and to try and be more positive.”

Bold words to live by, but ones that have seen them embrace both their musical journey and the fans they’ve garnered along the way into a tight-knit community, one they engage with regularly and love meeting at shows. Even five albums in, in a genre many write off as copying its titans, BEYOND THE BLACK are determined to prove there’s far more to them than meets the eye and to provide a sense of solace and hope to their fans, or anyone that might need it in their life.

Beyond The Black is out now via Nuclear Blast Records. 

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