Der Weg Einer Freiheit: Friends Of The Night

Bavaria’s DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT are becoming one of the brightest lights in Germany’s metal constellation. The band is the longstanding project of songwriter and frontman Nikita Kamprad who cultivates a distinct sound, unrestrained by black metal orthodoxy. That stylistic emancipation lies at the core of DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT’s motivations, musical or otherwise. “When I started the project, and began writing music for the first album, I wanted a name which simply expressed what I wanted to do; what I was doing with the music,” explains Kamprad. “For me, it happened to be music, but here are many things people can find their passion and freedom in.”

Meaning ‘The Path to Freedom’ liberation borne of creativity has informed, and become manifest in, each of DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT’s five albums. “Looking around at the world there are many problems and I never have the feeling that mankind in general is doing a very good job,” he smiles. “The news is full of negativity, and I have a very hard time finding anything positive or optimistic in it all. The negativity which we all experience influences the band, which has always been a way of finding inner peace and inner freedom.”

Dissonance and melancholy connect DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT with the black metal tradition, which runs as a thread through their music to this day. “I started to write the first songs in 2007, and then in 2009 the first demo was released. I recorded it at home with a drum machine: the way nearly every band starts,” he laughs. “Then in 2010 we re-recorded the demo with a real drummer, and released that as the first album. That was Christian Bass, who went on to play in HEAVEN SHALL BURN. Tobias Schuler took his place, and we have been playing together ever since. We know and trust each other implicitly,” he adds, admiringly.

The creative core established on the Wacht single propelled the band through the next two studio albums, Unstille and Stellar. “There would always be friends supporting us on stage, on the second guitar and bass,” explains Kamprad, “but there was no fixed lineup until 2017 when both Nicholas Zisker and Nicholas Rausch joined. We did a lot of touring in support of Finisterre, and quickly found out that this was the perfect lineup for the band,” he beams. “We’re all very good friends, and there’s a lot of trust and respect among us, which is the most important thing for a band· That is why, after four releases, we chose to record nearly all of the new album live.”

Noktvrn, now their fifth album, is the band’s most conceptual release to date, which sees Kamprad and company pushing their creative boundaries ever further. “Ever since I wrote the first song for this album, I knew that this would be my night album,” recalls Kamprad. “I had wanted to write an album about the night before,” he continues, “but in 2019 I had this strange experience which meant that it would finally happen. I was lying in bed sometime in the early morning, and the song Immortal came to my mind in a dream: the melody, bass line and basic structure. It was right there before my inner eye, and I could play it back to myself in my head. I woke up and wrote it down, then finished writing the song the following day.”

Immortal went on to become the centrepiece of the album, with a peculiar progressive flair not unlike IHSAHN. “It seems crazy that I could write a song within a dream,” Kamprad admits. “I knew I had to base the concept of the album around the night, which meant shifting my daytime rhythms: I wanted to write all of the song lyrics during the night, just to focus on the nocturnal emotions. Of course, the night is different. You’re mostly alone. You’re in solitude. It’s dark, and you deal with your own thoughts and feelings much more than during the day.”

In the classical tradition a Nocturne is a piece of music inspired by the night, and is closely associated with Chopin whose twenty-one solo piano works are synonymous with the term. “There is no direct musical link,” explains Kamprad. “The important link is that Chopin, and classical music in general, inspired me to think about the songwriting and compositional approach differently. With Chopin’s Nocturnes, he creates a whole landscape of harmonies and melodies within just one instrument. It made me ask: how can I arrange my music in the best way possible, with the instruments that I have? I don’t want to be a band playing just power chords!” he laughs. “I wanted to ensure that every instrument has its own place in the mix, but is never just a solo instrument. We don’t play guitar solos really, and when I do play a lead, it’s because it creates a certain atmosphere within the arrangement. That’s where this classical approach comes in. Naming the album Noktvrn is my tribute to Chopin, who showed me so many new things in music.”

The creative possibilities afforded before dawn are well known to many artists, but a pure treatment of the concept in itself is less common. Their precise study is rendered visually by artist and illustrator Max Löffler, whose album artwork evokes both transitory light and the passing of time with a clock-like gradient. “He has done three albums with us so far and it’s always something very different, but always new and fresh,” comments Kamprad. “We were a bit afraid of the reaction it would get, and so was Max, because it’s very simple; a gradient. It meets the album’s atmosphere perfectly.” The circular, askew image indicates another interesting property of Noktvrn: the album lends itself to repeat listens, with opening track Finisterre II leading on easily from Haven. “That is accidental,” insists Kamprad, “but if you listen closely, the last guitar chord of Haven isn’t there. it’s missing. There’s no sense of the album ending, and so the album finishes on a question mark, which means you can easily go back to the beginning.”

Noktvrn is out now via Season of Mist.

Like DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT on Facebook.