The Swedish metallers Humanity's Last Breath announce the release of their fifth studio album, titled Ashen. Due out August 4, 2023 via Unique Leader Records, it was written and produced by the band's guitarists Buster Odeholm and Calle Thomér. Mixing and mastering was handled by Buster Odeholm at Odeholm Audio. Cover artwork, design & layout by C. Saros. In celebration of the new album announcement, the band have launched a music video for the first track in preview "Labyrinthian".




Guitarist Buster Odeholm comments on Ashen:

"Ashen is the loudest, most distorted & abrasive HLB album yet. It's the sound of explosive devastation being unleashed.

"When you write something only by yourself, you can only go so far as knowing what works and what doesn't. If you have other people involved, you can go further. Remove stuff that does not serve the songs, even though maybe you felt it was good when you wrote it or put a lot of time into it. Also, when you have other people involved, it's easier to realise if a particular riff or a song works because you don't have that clear overview if you work alone. Since it's collaborative, I think this album is way better because we have removed a bunch of bullshit that I would probably have kept.

"When I started writing the album Calle Thomér wasn't supposed to be involved, we hadn't talked about it, at least. But since we started working together on other bands or people's music, I saw what he did to songs and thought it could be interesting. So I asked if I could send him one track and let him do whatever he wanted to it just to see what would happen, and he said yes. So he did that, and the music turned out great. I think we did that for all songs except one. So this opened the doors to further collaboration. And that's when I contacted Timothé Baqué of No Oath / Modern Nihilism Recordings.

"I gave him free rein to do whatever he wanted to the music. Instead of changing arrangements like I thought he would, he added synths. He also sampled the stems and created new sounds, which was very interesting. After that, I went through and removed stuff and kept the sounds I liked. I also used some of his effects on other parts where they were fitting.

"Ashen is the best representation of HLB to date. It has that "elastic" feeling that I'm after in music. It has tempo changes that don't feel like tempo changes and key changes without the sense of changing the key. It's also a lot groovier than our latest albums. I somehow felt that groove sounded too "happy" in the last two albums, or at least on Abyssal. It's essential to recognize that what people want in this genre of music has a lot to do with groove, and that is fine by me. I like that too. I've made many albums by myself doing exactly what I want. With Ashen, we've honed in on what we want to be great about HLB. It's also the first HLB record in over 10 years with real drums.

"Aside from it being our first collaborative effort there are some other things that differ a bit. I recorded vocals with Filip remotely. We used a software called Audiomovers which lets you record input from someone else's DAW. So we set it up so Filip could record in his home studio and the sound would be recorded straight into my DAW. Not only did it save time, it’s just a more relaxing way of recording. I also recorded all of the drums in our rehearsal space, and edited most of it on my laptop while on tour."

Source:	facebook.com
Band profile:	Humanity's Last Breath