Finding a quiet corner not too far from the festival noise, we first had a short chat about how their show was at Alcatraz Festival earlier that day. They both seemed very pleased with how things went, with Serena mentioning a good atmosphere in the crowd, no major sound issues, and so on. We also briefly talk about the fact that their spot on the smaller club vibe stage La Morgue was an ideal situation for them, thriving on that close connection with the crowd.

But we were here mostly to talk about their new album ‘The Weight Of The Mask’ (out October 6 via Nuclear Blast Records). It’s been about 3 years since their last release, which was mostly caused by the pandemic hitting us, since Svalbard is the kind of band that only writes music when getting together in real life. Even though this is the album that took them the longest, they’re actually quite satisfied by the extra time they got through the pandemic, having honed down more on the details and quality of the songs.

Svalbard‘s music and especially this album focuses really much on mental health and the lack thereof, so we touch on that, asking Serena what she would say to someone who is struggling right now. Getting serious for a moment, she goes on a bit of a monologue, saying that it’s important to acknowledge something is wrong and not everything is alright, and that they’re not alone in feeling the darkness. She also makes sure to point out that this album is about mental illness and not mental health, of which she feels talking about mental illness has not improved as much as working on mental health has. Her music is never going to tell you to feel better, but will rather be there to sit with you in the darkness. And one of her biggest hopes is that this album will have a proper impact on people and their fans and helps those who struggle by simply being there to support them along hard times.

This album is also the first one they get to release with Nuclear Blast, which is a major step, or even leap, forward for them, having released their last album on a rather small label. Which seems still very unreal to them both, with Serena mentioning that the label and its (old) logo is basically the soundtrack of her youth, having grown up with the majority of big names on that label.

Since before the interview started, someone had thrown it out there that Serena was hoping to catch a bit of the Immolation show still, we decided to wrap it up here, giving her hopefully a shot to make it there in time.

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