Elvenking announce new album ‘Reader Of The Runes – Rapture’

December 12, 2022 James Weaver

ELVENKING have announced a new album!

Titled Reader Of The Runes – Rapture, the upcoming album from the Italian power/folk metal band is the follow-up to 2019’s Reader Of The Runes – Divination, and is scheduled to be released in April next year, via AFM Records.

The upcoming album was written between 2020 and 2022, and was recorded between May and October 2022 by the band and producer Scott Atkins [CRADLE OF FILTH, BEHEMOTH] who also took over mixing and mastering duties.

“How would we have approached musically the second chapter of the Reader Of The Runes trilogy? That’s a question we asked ourselves many times before finalizing the songwriting process,“ vocalist Damna and guitarist Aydan from the band explain about the upcoming album. “Working both on ROTR Part 2 and Part 3 at the same time, really helped us spread the songs, the lyrics and the atmospheres on the whole remaining part of the story as the development of the events needed a strong backing from the music. So, Part 2 is indeed darker, it needed to be tragic and violent and this gave us the chance to fully breathe the soundscape we already had in mind as we started to write songs in early 2020. We feel that with this album we have cast a milestone and set a further limit in what we can do by mixing wisely what we deeply love in metal. We are very satisfied with all the shades that compose these eleven songs; altogether they make a canvas we are very proud of. Part 3 instead will explore the disclosure of all the mysteries narrated in the first two chapters and for this very reason you’ll have to expect even further different musical nuances in the future of this trilogy.”

Alongside the announcement of the new album, ELVENKING have released a new music video for a new song lifted from the upcoming album; Rapture. “After three years of absence, we decided to give our fans a taste of the album that could be as plenty as possible.“ Aydan and Damna comments. “Rapture is one of the longest tracks of the lot and we feel it has all the epicness, the tragic nature and most of the nuances that the album incorporates in its entire length, so this is what we wanted to offer to our listeners as a first glimpse of Reader Of The Runes – Rapture. Also, lyrically it is the perfect link between the previous chapter and this one, as it is the Introduction. The story opens on the Reader Of The Runes himself and we read about his mindset and plans before the climax that will be described in the rest of the songs.”

Watch the official music video for Rapture here:

Also, you can view both the track list and artwork for the upcoming new album below:

Track List:

1. Rapture
2. The Hanging Tree
3. Bride of Night
4. Herdchant
5. The Cursed Cavalier
6. To the North
7. Covenant
8. Red Mist
9. Incantations
10. An Autumn Reverie
11. The Repentant