AVKRVST downstairs at The Dome - London

Norwegian progressive rock AVKRVST plus support.

Tickets https://tinyurl.com/BAavkrvst
£20 adv. // 7pm

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Presented by ba-concerts.com and Glassville Music.

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AVKRVST

https://youtu.be/5OMpnEZDY3U
avkrvst.com

Forged in the flames of childhood friendship, AVKRVST appeared from nowhere, fully formed and avowedly creative. Simon Bergseth and Martin Utby are musicians operating on instinct and intuition, and judging by the ecstatic response to their debut album *The Approbation*, there are many people who recognise magic when they hear it. Released in 2023, *The Approbation* introduced a new force in progressive metal, and a fresh strain of artful heaviness that instantly chimed with the prog community and beyond.

"The great response to *The Approbation* was beyond what we could've ever imagined," says Simon. "This all started as this side thing for Martin and myself to just hang out a bit more - to drink beer, play music and just be together in each other's company. We've gotten tons of mails and messages from every continent, people showing their support and love - and that makes the time Martin and I have spent making music feel extra worthwhile and touching. Since the release we've been playing some live shows in England, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands, but at the same time we've been doing our many yearly trips to our now famous cabin to write new material for what has become *Waving at the Sky*."

Two years on from their spellbinding debut, AVKRVST are poised to release their second and most formidable album to date. *Waving at the Sky* takes everything that was compelling about *The Approbation* and pushes it further towards progressive perfection. A dark and devastating concept record about real life events, it is a spiritual successor to its predecessor and a huge leap forward on every conceivable level.

"We started on this album even before *The Approbation* was released, so it's a somewhat continuation of our last record, musically," says Simon. "At the same time, *The Approbation* was extremely easy to write - it was basically just the first thing that popped into our heads and our hands as we were writing it, strictly inspired by the music we grew up with, and we didn't really try to make anything specific. On *Waving at the Sky*, we've tried to evolve ourselves in a more original direction, to dig a bit deeper into our musical selves, and to try a bit more stuff than last time, but without losing ourselves in it. I think we've achieved exactly that."

Written and recorded (drums aside) at the duo's cabin in Alvdal, Norway, *Waving at the Sky* is a mesmerising display of sophisticated songwriting, technical excellence and expert storytelling. It was engineered by the band themselves, and subsequently mixed to prog perfection by Simon Bergseth at his studio in Oslo, and mastered by his father, Kjetil Bergseth. There are guest appearances from keyboard wizards Auver Gaaren and Øystein Aadland, and a glorious cameo from Haken frontman Ross Jennings on razor-sharp single *The Malevolent*. Meanwhile, the album's hazy, unsettling narrative is based on the harrowing events that took place in rural Norway when Simon and Martin were children.

"Story-wise, this is the prequel to the first album. The lonely man in the cabin, who was going insane on *The Approbation*, is one of the characters in our new album, referred to as 'the stepdad'. The story is about two families that are neighbours, who both abuse their children and then they start doing it with each other's children too. It was a big thing on the news in Norway. The spoken words in the intro and in the last song are things taken from the eventual trial. It's basically as dark as you can get. Martin and myself were a lot younger, so we didn't comprehend or grasp the depths of it at the time. Now, over a decade later, each with our own daughters and family, the case suddenly had an extreme impact when it came to mind on one of the first trips to the cabin."

Although inspired by gruesome and traumatic events, *Waving at the Sky* is not entirely consumed by darkness. In fact, AVKRVST have undergone a beautiful evolution, with every aspect of their genre-blending sound enhanced beyond measure. From the staccato gut-punch that ushers in groove-driven opener *Preceding*, and the tense, propulsive prog metal of *The Trauma*, to the folk-rock sprawl of *Conflating Memories* and the overwhelming, atmospheric potency of the epic closing title track, *Waving at the Sky* is modern progressive music at its deepest, darkest and most bewitching.

"When we were done making the title track, and listening back several times, it was missing something," Simon recalls. "The track didn't have the crucial thing we needed to give the ending that glimpse of hope and the feeling of release. So when the track really hits the climax, where it used to just end, we brought in one beautiful part from the intr

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Artist : Avkrvst