(written by Islander)
We have been fervent fans of Finland’s Black Royal for a lot of years — not all of their years, but at least since singles began surfacing in the lead-up to their debut album Lightbringer in 2018. Ever since then we’ve been hooked by their stupefyingly heavy, massively grooved, frighteningly ferocious, and irresistibly addictive blend of sludge and death metal. And so we were most happy to discover that 2026 would bring us a new Black Royal album. Its daunting name is Abyssian.
In April of this year Black Royal and their label M-Theory Audio released a video for the album’s first single, the savage “Water of the Crow” (discussed here), and then in August they released the second one, “Drown the Seaweed” (discussed here). It too arrived with a striking video, and while it is (of course) an enormous head-mover, it also creates a mythic atmosphere that’s unsettling.
And now, as of today, we have the album’s third single and yet another attention-seizing video (a chilling one). The name of this song is “Extremophiles“, and like the first two singles it also has a water-focused theme — a fascinating and quite unusual one. While we can’t claim our sharing of it is a premiere, we do have an interview focused on the song (but also spilling over to the album as a whole) with Black Royal’s powerhouse vocalist and lyricist Riku.
photo by Scarlett Memony Photography
As just mentioned, the lyrical subject matter of the song is very different from what usually fills the throats of sludge and death metal vocalists. Here is the band’s description:
“Brine pools are one of the greatest mysteries of oceanography. The dense, unmixed brine lies at the bottom of the ocean, forming what appears to be a separate body of water. Although the term “underwater lake” sounds like an oxymoron, from a scientific perspective, it makes perfect sense. Brines with extraordinarily high salt concentrations do not mix with seawater and are so dense that they form distinct structures on the ocean floor, beyond which a completely different world begins.
“Despite the seemingly hostile conditions in brine pools, some organisms have managed to thrive there. These are extremophiles – microorganisms that have developed extraordinary adaptation mechanisms. Their unique cell wall and membrane structures allow them to function in extremely high salinity and toxic environments.
“A composition of water and gases in brine pools, sheds new light on the movement of the elements in the ocean and the Earth’s deep crust. They look like mirrors on the seafloor – a liquid boundary separating two different worlds, forming through complex processes occurring over thousands or even millions of years. Several mechanisms contribute to the formation of these extraordinary reservoirs.”
We did say the subject matter is unusual! But as Riku observes in our interview with him (down below), it is still quite metal — a real-world tale of ultimate survival by extreme and alien organisms under almost unimaginably harsh conditions. “Everything else around dies and crushes to bits in these pools but extremophiles survive.”
As for the song itself, Riku explained: “We tried to capture the pressure in the seabed and the weight of the water into that song as well as the coldness and silence of the deep”. The song is indeed crushingly heavy — and eerie. The gritty riffing and humongously heaving bass create pressure and put a chill on the mind’s skin, not so much the chill of temperature but that of trepidation. And the drums pop with knee-capping force.
But this is Black Royal, and so they also deliver an enormous chugging riff that will wake up listeners’ reptile brains and feed them. The blast-furnace intensity of the vocals enhances the song’s intimidating fearsomeness, even though the lyrics are mainly a scientific explanation of the extremophiles’ world and how they survive in it, and the guitars viciously seethe and disturbingly wail, as if rendering the creatures’ otherworldly domains in sound.
The song also includes an eerily ringing keyboard melody above vigorous percussive hammering and terrifying screams — a haunting ethereal melody that quickly becomes one of the song’s hallmarks — interspersed with a phase of towering sonic immensity.
It’s thus a song of multiple facets, and another testament to Black Royal’s songwriting prowess.
Credit for the “Extremophiles” video again goes to Markus Vähäaho / RAW•ART Creations.
Abyssian is due for release on Friday, October 30, via M-Theory Audio, and pre-orders are available now. Along with the following links we’re also including the videos for the album’s first two afore-mentioned singles — and after those we invite you to take in our interview with vocalist Riku., which sheds further light on the song and the album.
PRE-ORDER:
https://blackroyal.bandcamp.com/
FOLLOW BLACK ROYAL:
http://www.blackroyal.fi/
http://www.facebook.com/blackroyalmusic
http://instagram.com/blackroyal_finland/
BLACK ROYAL INTERVIEW
Thanks very much for taking my questions. You have a new album named Abyssian that’s due for release by M-Theory Audio on October 30th. All three of the singles released from it so far, including the one that will be released on the day we publish this interview, seem to involve water themes, and more specifically themes regarding life beneath the surfaces of oceans and lakes. The titles of some of the other songs suggest similar subjects. Is there any overarching concept or theme for Abyssian?
Yeah, maybe not a concept but a theme based on water related stuff.
When you think of water in a lake and in oceans, everyone thinks about how deep it is and what lies beneath. It is so unknown that it feels mysterious and that is what troubles our minds.
Combining heavy music and water-based lyrics instantly gives you an image of seamonsters, pirates and storms in the seven seas but that picture was erased quite rapidly just by reading the science books. Still, I managed to add some old beliefs from ancient Nordics and how they lived with the water and its bearers.
I want to leave it to the listener what to make out of it. But when you pick up the cover art and start listening to the album, it will surely make sense.
The third single from Abyssian, “Extremophiles,” has a fascinating subject, and one that’s quite uncommon in the realms of heavy metal: it concerns brine pools that form at the bottom of oceans, and microorganisms that have adapted to thrive there despite the hostile conditions of those pools. What attracted you to these extraordinary creatures and their equally extraordinary environments?
I usually tend to read literature about the matter before I start writing anything down. And as always, the learned studies and profound science within all aquatic facts are way more intriguing than my expectations ever were. When I read about brine pools, it was an instant decision to make the lyrics. Every line I studied was a perfect match for a metal song and I was just overwhelmed by the facts about these lifeforms. I mean, it all could be a Hollywood script for a scifi movie but it is a real thing in an extreme condition with these organisms involved. An ultimate survival story happening in the deepest underwater lake. How more “metal” can you get?
The lyrics for “Extremophiles” scientifically explain how these organisms survive in their lightless and toxic environments, but the lyrics also include the line, “All torn asunder by nautical hunter.” What does that refer to?
I was trying to underline the extremity of those organisms and how they survive and thrive despite the harsh conditions. Everything else around dies and crushes to bits in these pools but extremophiles survive. They are the ultimate hunters of the deep sea. Almost like cockroaches after a nuclear war are the only ones left on the surface of the earth.
Do you see the song as having an alternate meaning besides the literal one, a more metaphorical or mythical meaning? The music itself is often frightening – immense and ominous but also with accents that eerily ring, and the vocals are scary as hell too.
We tried to capture the pressure in the seabed and the weight of the water into that song as well as the coldness and silence of the deep. I think that’s where the eeriness comes from.. From my point of view the facts about these creatures were just so powerful that it didn’t need any hidden metaphors. All the riffs are so epic that when I heard them for the first time I decided that the lyrics should be epic as well.
There’s a song on Abyssian named “Vetehinen”, and a bit of research tells me that’s the name of a water spirit from Finnish folklore, so I guess the songs aren’t all based on realities within the earth’s waters, is that right?
Yes, even though I tried to skip all the obvious sea monster stories there are a couple tracks about Nymphs, Sirens and Nixies. They all are mutual, global phenomena in folklore of the seas. They are well documented also in ancient Nordic literature and they have a big part in myths about water spirits and bearers all around the world.
The new album follows Earthbound from 2022. Did you have particular goals for how to follow that album musically — other than continuing to write very heavy and very catchy songs? Do you see differences in the music on Abyssian as compared to Earthbound, an evolution in Black Royal’s sound?
The first riffs for this album were done while we were still mixing Earthbound. Most of them in the end of 2022 to early 2023. Our guitarist Toni did all the riffs for this one and he usually records a lot of tracks and we start to arrange them together. Our method has always been the same and it works really well. This time we had an idea of a style that was “what if Clutch played Entombed”. The songs are a bit more straight-forward but with better riffs and epic choruses. They might be more powerful because of that than before. We shortened eerie passages between songs and in c-parts but not at the cost of mood or lack of feeling. The album is a bit heavier probably also because our current bass player plays with pick instead of fingers -like our original bassist Pete used to do up to the Earthbound album. I feel we got good riffs (again, hah) and the songs turned out effortlessly because they were jammed into being in the rehearsal room – like we always do.
What are Black Royal’s plans for the rest of 2026?
We have a couple of shows in Finland around the album release date and after that. Lots of interviews are coming in so that will keep us busy and that is always a good sign for the future. Also we continue to plan and book shows and tours and our aim is to do as much as we can, especially next year. It has been too long since the last European tour so we are really looking for that to happen.