Just like the titular whirlpool in their 2nd album Corryvreckan, Hand Of Kalliach’s rush of melodic loss of life steel and Gaelic folks track will pull you below a vortex of robust guitars and airy siren songs. The Edinburgh-based husband-and-wife duo weave stories round historical myths and legends as grand as their Scottish place of birth.
“It used to be a wild and peculiar mission that we would have liked to do only for us,” guitarist and vocalist John Fraser says. “One thing to in point of fact break out and get a divorce the monotony [of the pandemic lockdowns].” John and his spouse, co-vocalist Sophie Fraser, have 3 babies and feature led a quiet lifestyles within the 9 years they’ve been married. By no means of their wildest goals would they’ve concept they’d be liberating track in combination, let on my own signal to a report label. “I were given requested in an interview how I believe about being a musician,” Sophie says. “I don’t assume I’d in truth realised that I used to be a musician. It’s simply very peculiar to consider myself like that. I’m an excessively unintended musician.”
Caught at house in 2020, the Frasers fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hollow of Scottish folklore, tinkering with striking the ones tales in opposition to an undertow of loss of life steel and amplified with melodies of conventional Gaelic track. “We’d mentioned doing one thing for some time with a Celtic vein that had an excessively other interpretation of people,” John says. “Clearly at the present time you have got a large number of approval for Nordic mythology, however there may be as a lot at the Scottish mythology aspect of items that no person is aware of about, together with Scottish folks. So it used to be a large number of a laugh digging into that – the extra you dig, the extra there’s.”
On a whim, they launched their first few demos via Bandcamp, anticipating to get misplaced within the never-ending ocean of recent and impartial track. However as an alternative, they discovered an target audience, inspiring them to self-release their debut album, Samhainn, in 2021. In January 2024, it used to be introduced that they had signed with Prosthetic forward of the discharge of recent album Corryvreckan a month later.
“I believe we had been emboldened and assured that we had the best form of sound and that we had been in the best ballpark,” John stated about their evolution to Corryvreckan. John and Sophie met about 12 years in the past in what she remembers used to be “a in point of fact grubby, crusty rock membership in Aberdeen.” People track has been a part of their courting for the reason that get started.
“Considered one of our first dates used to be at this little pub referred to as The Blue Lantern,” she says, turning to John. “There used to be this fantastic folks night time and this feminine singer who had haunting vocals. That’s more or less stayed with us and we strive and emulate that relatively so much, [that] conventional, airy, haunting more or less sound.”
Hand Of Kalliach have followed those components into their signature sound. Contrasting Sophie’s ghostly, disembodied croon in opposition to John’s growl and wall-of-sound guitars, their songs can vary from mesmerising and soothing to absolutely apocalyptic. “We more or less stumbled onto it,” John admits. “Sophie used to be performing some top vocals for the primary demo and after we had been enjoying it again I’d by accident left 3 of the opposite takes at the channel on the identical time. It created this amazingly, freaky refrain impact which, as it used to be so top pitched, had this spectral high quality.”
Hand of Kalliach’s lyrics are sung in each Gaelic and English, whilst swells of cello, synths and bagpipes increase pummelling loss of life steel riffs, translating the aggressiveness of melodeath with out drowning the listener in twee folks stereotypes. “We in point of fact need the folks to construct the ambience greater than anything else,” John says. “Basically, a large number of what we’re making is rooted in melodic loss of life steel.”
Even the band’s identify is taken from Scottish folklore, the Callieach an historical witch god of wintry weather, stated to reside on the backside of the Corryvreckan whirlpool. Desirous about the Cailleach’s twin nature, they’ve used her contrasting legends to encourage all angles in their band. “The cut up stories that you simply see within the mythology in point of fact resonated with the place we had been going sonically,” John says. “We’re seeking to construct that duality and distinction.”
The Frasers need their good fortune to encourage different budding artists. Their track didn’t get found out as a result of they had been following a development, however as a result of they had been being true to who they had been and what they sought after to do. “There’s most certainly a large number of bands who concept no person used to be gonna pay attention,” Sophie says. “We wish folks to have the stones to simply give it a attempt to again themselves,” John provides.
The next move is getting the band on level with targets to sooner or later excursion the United Kingdom. The Frasers have recruited a reside guitarist and drummer and rehearse on every occasion they may be able to in finding somebody to observe the youngsters. Their largest problem is balancing the quantity of atmospherics and layers to translate to the reside display.
“We will’t have a complete choir and a harpist and a cellist up on level,” John says. “We’re nonetheless figuring out the kinks simply to verify it’s going to sound correct.” However the practices have fuelled their urge for food to take Hand of Kalliach to the following degree. Till just lately, their track most effective existed of their headphones. Now there are different musicians enjoying their songs the best way they had been intended to be performed. “It used to be in truth the primary time we’d heard our sounds being performed loud,” John says. “It used to be like, ‘Wow! That is this type of raise and a blast!’”
