Imminence: From The Black With Love
Since the dawn of time, living creatures have used music to express emotion. From mating calls to mourning and beyond. Between those are the moments humanity is susceptible to the Devil’s violin of our own malicious thoughts. Swirling within a place dubbed The Black for their latest album, Swedish band IMMINENCE add heartbreaking melodies to the gut wrenching reality things aren’t what they seem.
“Lyrically, it’s about depression, passion and dealing with mental health and the darkness we carry inside,” vocalist/violionist Eddie Berg explains. “This album is really exploring that to its fullest extent.” While the subject matter is the usual stomping ground for IMMINENCE, guitarist Harald Barrett goes on to add, “I would say it’s the most authentic, honest, and the most intuitive album we’ve ever written. It’s the most Imminence out of any of our releases so far.”
This display of IMMINENCE brings with it the darkest blooms of Come Hell Of High Water, the organised chaos of Come What May, and the doom of Continuum. While The Black may not be visceral in terms of the journalism buzzword, what is on display is a certain lack of restraint, something which has been in development across IMMINENCE’s five album discography. Though what separates The Black from the likes of 2021’s Heaven In Hiding is the band’s willingness to allow intuition to guide them. In doing so, the band truly explored not only the violent tendencies maladaptive thoughts have with lyrics such as “just cut me open and leave me for dead” but also the solemn and quieter moments in the form of the album’s three instrumentals. When asked if this was a conscious decision, Eddie tells us. “I felt a constant pull towards something and that pull just told us what to do.”
It was partly due to this mentality that IMMINENCE decided to release The Black independently. A seemingly more popular trend within the rock and metal sphere, the absence of pressure from a record label to follow certain trends has led to some of the most authentic music our scene has experienced in recent years. In IMMINENCE’s case, it also made the alchemy of the album’s construction flow more naturally. Speaking about Come What May in particular, Harald reminisces on the challenge the track brought. “It challenged me as an instrumentalist to try and play with different riffs and rhythms to try and fit all the puzzle pieces together while still making it possible for Eddie to work with vocals over it.” These amalgamations of riffs, drums and vocals had to contend with another element; the violin and when it was appropriate to include it. Further alluding to instrumentals Cul-De-Sac and L’appel du Vide, Eddie muses, “sometimes I feel like a violin melody can convey emotions in a way that vocals sometimes cannot in the right context and in the right time.”
Emotional inference is integral to The Black. Rather than the album dictating the listener’s feelings and reactions, the listener imprints on to it which makes those instrumentals so vital. We are forced to reflect on the times we had been “staring down into the gates of hell” or fully leaning into The Call Of The Void. Moments of vulnerability, especially within mental health crises, are the gates we must pass through to progress. In many ways these reprieves hit much harder than a violent breakdown (musical or otherwise). Though it isn’t purely the listener who channels their feelings through music.
“It’s difficult to go through these feelings and deal with them,” Eddie muses. “But I’ve always found music was my escape and my way of turning it into something people can not only connect to but actually feel like they’re heard and understood.” While fan and band may be able to connect parasocially through the music, this isn’t the only connection which was cultivated. The brotherhood IMMINENCE houses also allowed Harald to feel validated as he goes on to explain.
“I just felt that I It was never really meant to have an ordinary life. There’s nothing wrong with that and I respect how people choose to live their lives, but I’ve always felt this isn’t for me.” With music bringing a life less ordinary, many people would trivialise a music career as a silly dream. Something which will always be just out of reach. The effect this had on Harald in particular was felt for a long time. “It takes a lot from you to try to convince yourself that you’re going to get into music or you’re going to be a musician, because for a very long time, I didn’t believe that it was possible for myself, or for us.”
In a case of art imitating life, IMMINENCE has become a product of their own self-belief. The band was formed when the members were 14 years old and has matured alongside them. While plagued with feelings of self-doubt, anxiety, and flares of depression, the quintet pressed on in the pursuit of happiness. “I believed in IMMINENCE from the start and wanted to give everything to make it happen,” Eddie comments. “Obviously there’s a level of uncertainty to it but I needed to chase it because this is the thing that makes me happiest.” Wherever a creative mind resides it seems imposter syndrome is never far away. What is refreshing about talking to the two musicians is witnessing the phenomenon of people coming through the other side of that particular battle with their demons. “If someone asks what I do, I say I’m a musician or I play in a band,” Eddie states. “That’s gotten better over time and as you allow yourself to feel more secure in what you do.” Bolstering the notion of harnessing self-confidence, Harald is quick to add, “you have to believe you have the right to say what you do and to be proud of that. It’s so important to give yourself that credit and not cling to an identity which doesn’t fit.”
This process of embracing your authenticity and the idiosyncrasies that comes with brought IMMINENCE to the mindset of “trust the process”, a phrase which has been repeated several times during our chat. “We really struggled with that in the past,” Harald says. “We’ve reached a point now where we understand what we do really well and we know it’s going to work out.”
There’s no further testament to trusting the process than The Black; a heartbreaking tableau of the struggles mental health brings. Yet IMMINENCE wants it to be a conduit of connectivity, a life buoy in the sea of darkness. “I hope people are able to connect with it and find their own meaning and purpose,” Harald muses. “I think it’s a perfect summary of what IMMINENCE looks like and of us as people,” Eddie adds. “I sincerely hope that when people listen to it they can feel what we feel.”
In a world where humanity is more upfront about their struggle treading water in the darkness of their own mind, pieces like The Black are more important than ever. It sits like a lighthouse in an inky sky. A beacon that things can and will improve with IMMINENCE being a prime example. It is a signal radiating from the black with love.
The Black is out now via self-release.
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