After surprising their fans with “Insomnia”, the proggy and mad first single from their upcoming album, Swiss progressive folk rockers Cellar Darling — who feature in their ranks former Eluveitie members Anna Murphy (vocals, hurdy-gurdy), Merlin Sutter (drums) and Ivo Henzi (guitars, bass) — have dropped a brand new song and have finally announced long-awaited details about their new release. Their second studio album will be a concept album titled “The Spell” and it will arrive on March 22 via Nuclear Blast.
Commented Cellar Darling: “As some of you have discovered already, over the past 13 days, we have revealed the tracklist of our new album, along with amazing artwork created by Costin Chioreanu, who is also behind all of the beautiful animated videos for the new songs.
“The 13 tracks of ‘The Spell’ invite you to witness the journey of a girl who falls in love with death. In the song released today, a spell has been cast on our protagonist — for now, her love shall go unfulfilled…”
‘The Spell’ title track can be streamed below.
Track listing:
01. Pain
02. Death
03. Love
04. The Spell
05. Burn
06. Hang
07. Sleep
08. Insomnia
09. Freeze
10. Fall
11. Drown
12. Love Pt. II
13. Death Pt. II
Murphy told CrypticRock.com that the formation of Cellar Darling came about naturally. “We always knew when we left Eluveitie that we would continue playing music,” she said. “We didn’t actually have to discuss it a lot. We always wanted to play music with the three of us, and that was going to be a side project of some sort, but obviously things changed. The way we worked, we didn’t plan our sound and we didn’t have ideas of what genre it was going to be in. We just started composing; it was a very natural process. We met up at the rehearsal studio, jammed, and gathered ideas. That is how Cellar Darling was created. It was all very organic and impulsive.”
Regarding Cellar Darling‘s musical direction, Anna said: “I guess our only plan was to do something new and unique. It wouldn’t been very exciting to do Eluveitie 2; we had done that for 10 years. We wanted to do something that basically melts our three different characters. That is just what happened. We also were surprised a bit with the results; we didn’t know what to expect from this collaboration. It is definitely different. I guess some of the folk parts are still in there because I play a folk instrument and it is some of our background, but now there are so much more influences that we can incorporate into our songwriting, including classical elements. That is something I have always loved and missed in our previous band. Yes, it a bit more experimental.”
Their debut album “This Is The Sound” has been released on June 30 via Nuclear Blast. The disc was recorded at New Sound Studio with producer Tommy Vetterli (Coroner/Eluveitie).
Our review of “This Is The Sound” can be found here.
Upcoming Shows:
Mar 21 @ Foundry Sheffield SU, Sheffield, United Kingdom
Mar 23 @ The Globe, Cardiff, United Kingdom
Mar 24 @ Hare and Hounds, Birmingham, United Kingdom
Mar 26 @ UEA The Waterfront, Norwich, United Kingdom
Mar 27 @ The Welly 2, Hull, United Kingdom
Mar 28 @ Audio, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Mar 29 @ On The Rox, Dublin, Ireland
Mar 30 @ Manchester Academy 3, Manchester, United Kingdom
Mar 31 @ Jazz Cafe, London, United Kingdom
Apr 02 @ De Helling, Utrecht, Netherlands
Apr 09 @ Traffic Live Club, Roma Rm, Italy
Jun 13 @ Greenfield Festival, Interlaken, Switzerland
Weblinks: Facebook / Website / Twitter / Spotify / iTunes
Video for ‘The Spell’
Video for ‘Insomnia’