* En anglais uniquement
Steeped in the bluesy, brooding, bottom-heavy traditions of bands like
Black Sabbath,
Hawkwind, and
Led Zeppelin, German psych-rock trio
Kadavar unapologetically spin '70s-era hard rock tropes into contemporary stoner metal gold. Known for explosive live shows, the band play hundreds of dates a year, and have done so since issuing their 2010 self-titled debut. That hard work paid off as each album sold better than its predecessor. Their third album, 2017's
Rough Times, entered the German album charts at 18. 2019's
For the Dead Travel Fast registered inside the U.S. metal Top 20 by celebrating all things fuzzy, trippy, and creepy. 2020 saw the band move to Berlin's Robotor Records and release the uncharacteristically moody The Isolation Tapes during the pandemic. At the end of 2021,
Kadavar teamed with American ex-pats
Elder to release the conceptual, six song, prog-psych tome
Eldovar: A Story of Darkness & Light.
Formed in Berlin by Christoph Lindemann (guitar, vocals),
Simon Bouteloup (bass), and Christoph Bartelt (drums), the immaculately bearded retro-rockers released their eponymous Teepee Records-issued debut in 2012. The band inked a deal with
Nuclear Blast the following year, the home of like-minded acts
Witchcraft and
Graveyard, resulting in their sophomore long-player
Abra Kadavar (2013) and chart-topping 2015 follow-up
Berlin. The summer of 2017 saw the release of a pair of singles, "Die Baby Die" and "Into the Wormhole," ahead of the arrival of their fourth studio long-player,
Rough Times, which dropped later that September. After playing over 300 shows over the next year-and-a-half,
Kadavar entered their newly revamped studio in May of 2019 to switch things up a bit. They emerged with an album that was their blackest sonically; equally inspired by old horror soundtracks,
Werner Herzog's Nosferatu, and first-wave European vintage doom metal. Entitled
For the Dead Travel Fast from a work by German gothic poet
Gottfried August Bürger, the self-produced effort was issued by
Nuclear Blast in the fall.
After cutting short their support tour due to the global COVID-19 pandemic,
Kadavar signed to Berlin's Robotor Records and got to work creating new music in quarantine by sharing files. They emerged with The Isolation Tapes in April 2021. Still unable to tour, they created a studio conceptual collaboration in Berlin with U.S.-born psych-stoner emigres
Elder. The six-song, 40-minute exercise in proggy psych was released as
Eldovar: A Story of Darkness & Light in December. ~ James Christopher Monger