Interview by Kris Peters
Norwegian hard rock/punk/metal outfit Blood Command are better known for their hard-hitting, punchier numbers that provide a sense of palpitation and venom when played in the live arena.
Since the addition of former Pagan vocalist Nikki Brumen from Australia, the band have taken on a more ferocious edge on the back of Brumen's take-no-prisoners approach to music that has seen Blood Command spread their wings as far as this country for the first time at last year's Good Things Festival.
After completing her first album as vocalist, Praise Armageddonism in 2022, Brumen has now fully claimed the role as Blood Command frontwoman as her own, allowing founding member and guitarist Yngve Andersen greater freedom to express his own musical personality, in turn elevating the band into another stratosphere altogether.
That newfound expression has translated to Blood Command's upcoming track Losing Faith, a song which will come as a shock to some people into the band, but will be seen more as a natural extension by others.
Venturing into acoustic territory, Losing Faith features just Brumen and Andersen, with both providing vocals in a country-style hoedown of a tune that focuses on the fallout of unrequited love.
HEAVY caught up with both of them on the eve of Friday's premiere of the song.
"I think that fans will maybe not be too shocked," Brumen began. "Yngve and I have spoken about this quite at length and I think the real diehard Blood Command fans might be pleasantly surprised. I think they might not even be surprised because it is still thematically very Blood Command. But perhaps for people that don't really know the band and maybe pigeonhole us as a heavy band with screaming vocals and guitars they are the people who might be quite shocked. It's a bit of a country western cowboy tune (laughs), so I think that there will be some surprised people which is what we really want. We like to keep people on their toes."
With the subject matter of Losing Faith centering on love failed and lost, we ask Brumen and Andersen which one of them got dumped for inspiration.
"It's not about a particular event," Andersen replied when he finished laughing. "It's about tapping into those feelings. Everyone has experienced heartache once in their lifetime at least, so I think it's very relatable."
"It's a typical Blood Command thing to write about," Brumen added. "A lot of the themes for many songs that Yngve has written in the past have had that feeling or that meaning behind it. Before we wrote this song Yngve sent me this really beautiful country and western song, sort of… it wasn't a similar message, but it kind of had a similar idea in that it was about someone pretending not to love someone and putting on a mask and acting that they didn't love someone, and we said wouldn't it be cool to write a song like that. That's where the idea might have stemmed from."
In the full interview, Nikki and Yngve discuss Losing Faith in greater detail, why they elected to do the track acoustically, the added vocals of Yngve and what they bring to the song, their recent tour of Australia and coming back, future plans and more.