NEWS: Bulgarian Death Metal Band HYPERBOREA Have Released Their First Album “Umbra”
“Umbra” is the first album of Bulgarian Death Metal band HYPERBOREA with the vocalist Dancho Ivanov and the drummer Antonis Trochopoulos. The album consists of 9 tracks, and has been recorded in Renewsound studio in Sofia, Bulgaria. The artwork design has been created by Nikos Marantidis and represents the eclipse on human consciousness whenever the personal shadow has not been fully or even partially integrated.
According to the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung’s ideas, a failure to integrate the personal shadow (which represents the process in which, one dives in their unconsciousness to learn more about themselves, thus achieving “wholeness”) will always serve as a gateway to the collective shadow, which is the daemon archetype. To the extent to which most of a society’s members have succeeded to integrate a considerable part of their personal shadows, this society will be immune to falling into the trap of the collective shadow (and revert to barbaric ways of behaviour). This is also the main philosophical theme of the album and the songs – the battle for the world’s well-being is an inner one.
Stream “Umbra” on Spotify:
So far, two singles have been released from “Umbra” as well – “Silent Stream” and “From Within”
HYPERBOREA SUMMARY:
Being around since 1997, HYPERBOREA has established their name as one of the most solid and recognizable Bulgarian death metal bands. Since the beginning of their career, the band has tilted more towards concert activity. Their considerable live experience has honed the necessary ability to play as a one entity in a live situation – with precision timing, crushing power, bite and heaviness that are the milestone of any death metal act worth its name. The band has opened for names like OBITUARY, ARCH ENEMY, VADER, PUNGENT STENCH, ASPHYX, CANCER, ANGEL WITCH, CREMATORY, and others. Their music is simultaneously aggressive and melodic, polyrhythmic, but at the same time not too complicated.
HYPERBOREA have three studio albums so far – the first two are “Architecture of Mind” (“Butchery Music”, 2004) and “Cryogenic Somnia” (“Counter Attack Productions”, 2007). Currently, HYPERBOREA are an artist of the Spanish label Art Gates Records and on 15th November 2019 they released their third studio album named “Umbra”, which we present to you as a promo.
CURRENT LINE-UP:
Dancho Ivanov – vocals | Yordan Kanchev – guitars | Andrey Andronov – guitars | Vladimir Ivanov – bass | Antonis Trochopoulos – drums
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“Back in mid-90s some things happened that pointed the severe need for change in our stagnant, misery-grabbed society – the government was forced to cede power in 1997 and the Bulgarian metal scene experienced a revival.
The new government undertook reforms that stabilized the market and as a result, it became easier to purchase high-quality musical equipment and instruments. Naturally, this catalyzed the development of a whole new wave of bands and musicians. The first wave had been in the late 80s and the early 90s, when the iron grip of communism had begun to loosen and this unleashed a surge of pent-up rage and hidden talent. Some of the representatives of the heavy part of this first wave were Amadeus, Kassandra, Past Redemption, Kriza, Scapegoat.
We are among the Bulgarian metal bands, which started their activity in mid-late 90s and were alive for the years ahead – like Korozy, Desolate, Samhain, Brainstorm, Enthrallment. We were not a band up till mid-97; rather a bunch of metalheads who went to parties, listened to Sepultura, Death, Obituary and Pestilence and drank their heads off. We so wanted to be like these bands. Things started to take shape in the early spring of 1998, when we made our first gigs before a crazy, death metal-thirsty audience. We played something like Florida-style death metal with huge thrash influence and traces of the Scandinavian scene – roughly, what we all listened to.
Things started to unfold very quickly. We started making concert after concert in Bulgaria and a couple of times in Romania and Greece. We became popular because we played our favourite music in an honest manner, without trying to please anybody but ourselves. In this period, we recorded a demo called “Catharsis”.
In 2004 we released our debut album “Architecture of Mind” (Butchery Music) which earned spectacular reviews from the Bulgarian metal media like Pro-Rock Magazine, which gave us a 9/10 score and qualified us as “the future of heavy music in Bulgaria”.
In the following years, we put all our effort in our second album “Cryogenic Somnia” (Counter Attack) which was released in 2007. It was placed as the best Bulgarian metal album of the year by the readers of the leading Pro-Rock Magazine. Foreign media described it as, for example: “The works characterize considerable changeability and they contain the many motifs[…]Listening the whole – my associating hit to Florida’s DEATH”, or: “Their songs have sometimes confusingly complex rhythmic patterns but always sound sensibly”, or: “The offered material is more varied than the recordings of some well-established US bands”.
In November 2019 our third full-length studio album “Umbra” was released by the Spanish label Art Gates Records.”
– Hyperborea
