Sojourner: Through Pits of Desolation

International outfit SOJOURNER are a difficult band to categorise. Though their foundation has always been atmospheric black metal, there’s a much wider scope to the band than just aping the early works of AGALLOCH or WINDIR, with elements of symphonic metal, prog, death metal and even traditional heavy metal all bleeding into their sound, alongside more ambient, post-rock leanings. Built on the hard graft of songwriting duo Mike Lamb and Chloe Bray, alongside lead vocalist and main lyricist Emilio Crespo, the quintet, spread across the globe, have developed a strong following. But their newest offering, Premonitions, is a bit of a departure, seeing development for the band musically, lyrically, and even in their approach to cover artwork.

“We didn’t want another castle!” Lamb laughs, referencing the theme of ruined Scottish castles that was the bedrock of SOJOURNER’s album artwork on debut Empire of Ash and 2018’s The Shadowed Road. “It’s just a visually striking image based on some cool imagery we thought up that captures the atmosphere we wanted. I wish there was a deeper meaning, but it’s just a really cool cover!”

Lamb makes it sound pretty blasé, but as Bray mentions, there was already talk of the artwork when the pair began planning the writing of Premonitions, and how to have the artwork be a reflection of the evolution of the music itself. “When we had a conversation about the general atmosphere we wanted for Premonitions, strangely, we were talking in terms of how the cover should be and how it should reflect the atmosphere,” Bray explains. “We talked a lot about the colours that we wanted to have on the next album and how we wanted it to be a nocturnal scene instead of the brighter scenes that we had on the previous two albums, and how we wanted it to sound. We wanted it to have a night time sound, we wanted it to sound darker, and more mysterious, and slightly spooky. That sounds quite abstract, but that was the atmosphere we wanted for this one.”

With a darker atmosphere and a more foreboding sound in general, it’s fitting, then, that lyrically SOJOURNER went down a different path for Premonitions. Mostly gone are the classic black metal odes to nature, the rousing, fantastical tales of heroism and war, and the exploration of Greek tragedy. This time, Bray, Crespo and Lamb used SOJOURNER as a cathartic vessel, purging themselves onto the lyric sheet.

“During the writing of Premonitions, everybody in the band was going through a tough time. When it came time to write the lyrics I actually didn’t want to follow the whole nature and fantasy thing. Instead, I decided to just write about my personal experiences at that moment,” Crespo explains. “I write in a very abstract way. I don’t like to be super direct as I want people to be able to read the lyrics and be able to take their own meaning and interpretation.”

But although these more personal lyrics tie in nicely to the darker atmosphere of Premonitions, this wasn’t by design. “It was actually strangely coincidental. We wanted a darker album, partly just because our second album, The Shadowed Road, had quite a triumphant, majestic kind of atmosphere. We want our albums to always feel a little bit different, that seemed artistically like the way to go,” Bray explains. “A couple of months into writing the album, for various reasons, weird things happened to all of us that were difficult to deal with. None of us were really in a good place to write the album, but we made the decision to use that to channel into the darker atmosphere that we wanted. So it was a strange coincidence, but it worked well with the music.”

But for all the evolution and change, the foundation of SOJOURNER remains the same. The partnership of Lamb and Bray continue to write almost everything, except lyrics, and the duo continue to deliver grandiose feelings that are difficult to put into words. And this approach to songcraft is, at least on Bray’s part, influenced by her studies in Greek tragedy, for which she recently completed her PhD – Interrogating Liminality: Threatening Landscapes in Ancient Greek Tragedy. “SOJOURNER is all about epic landscapes, and a lot of the music is trying to recreate the feeling of being in those landscapes. If I’m ever on a hike in some really ridiculous landscape, there’s this feeling that you almost can’t explain. You don’t have any feelings that are quite big enough to respond to what you’re seeing, somehow. It’s a weird thing to explain, and I think that’s why sometimes I feel music is the only way of describing that feeling,” she explains, detailing the inspiration of both her thesis and how it impacts SOJOURNER.

Epic is a word thrown around these days a little too recklessly, but make no mistake, SOJOURNER are epic – in every sense of the word. The songwriting partnership of Bray and Lamb is incredible, and together the duo make up one of the most underrated songwriting teams in heavy music. Even from the first listen of Premonitions, it’s impossible to not be dragged through pits of desolation – and things can only get bigger, better, and bleaker for them from here.

Premonitions is out now via Napalm Records. 

Like SOJOURNER on Facebook.