Friday Full-Length: Vaka, Kappa Delta Phi
Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 5th, 2024 by JJ KoczanThere are about five different angles of approach I’ve come up with that I could take in discussing Vaka‘s 2009 full-length debut and lone-to-date offering, Kappa Delta Phi (review here). Here they are:
1. I could start by telling you about the career trajectory that led Karl Daniel Lidén to form the studio project, solo-based but expanded into complete-band arrangements filled out by players recruited for bass, guitar, vocals, even some cello tucked into expansively marching, gloriously Mellotronned closer “For Redemption.” Already by 2009, Lidén had been a member of Demon Cleaner, Greenleaf and Dozer. He’d founded Tri-Lamb Studios, where he’d not only record his own drums, piano, Mellotron and other keys, synth and probably a little bit of whatever was around for the Vaka material he composed, but would go on to helm albums for Katatonia, Greenleaf, Switchblade, Propane Propane, Bloodbath, Crippled Black Phoenix and a slew of others. He’s been an essential part of the course of Swedish heavy music over the last 20-plus years and Kappa Delta Phi remains the project of his own that, to-date, he has most spearheaded as a musician, songwriter, and producer. It’s a fun story, and a multifaceted enough record to stand up to the winding course which brought Lidén to it circa 2008-2009.
2. I could talk about the songs themselves, which are varied as one might expect for an album that features upwards of 10 different players contributing to its 10 component pieces and built on mostly post-metallic foundations given distinction through heavy use of piano — it starts on the intro “The Ship” and piano and keys are prominent throughout; a common element skillfully tying otherwise disparate ideas together; it’s very much a producer’s record — and marked by the shifts in atmosphere from the call-and-response barks and Neurosis-style churn of the nine-minute “Born to Secrecy” to the rumbling, lumbering payoff of the writhing “Stalemates” near the finish, to the midsection, might’ve-been-the-side-B-intro-to-a-vinyl-release interlude “Glacialis” and the various drones abounding blending the grounded and ethereal, severity and float. What might’ve been a messy process (let alone mix) working remotely before doing so became commonplace resulting in crushing, purposeful, and thrillingly volatile songs. There’s a lot going on here and a lot to talk about. This also would be fun.
3. I could tell you that when the Bandcamp broken heart thing came up because I’d streamed the album so many times revisiting it over the last couple weeks, I bought it (I have the CD from when it was released on Murkhouse Recordings in ’09 as well), and downloaded the wav files instead of mp3s because I wanted to hear it as full and uncompressed as possible.
4. I could run down that aforementioned significant number of artists involved in making the record, from vocalist Manne Ikonen (also ex-Zerocharisma) and guitarist Wille Naukkarinen (also ex-Sunride, he runs St-st-studio as well), both of Finland’s Ghost Brigade, contributing to “Born to Secrecy,” Ikonen trading lines with Misha Sedini of Come Sleep and Lingua, among others, to cellist Christoffer Ohlsson (Blue Foundation) adding to the breadth of “For Redemption,” where Melloboat Festival founder Stefan Dimle (also Landberk) handles bass. Ikonen and Naukkarinen, the Finnish contingent, both take part in the linear build across “At the Hands of Loss,” and also on bass are Johan Rockner, known for his work in Dozer and Greenleaf and up until 2023 also in Besvärjelsen, and Peder Bergstrand, who in 2008 released the debut from I Are Droid (who played in Stockholm last month; a third LP would be a pleasant surprise), and had already issued one of the most influential heavy rock records of the turn-of-the-century era in Lowrider‘s ultra-classic 2000 debut, Ode to Io (reissue review here). Bergstrand (who also did the design and layout for the digipak) and Rockner had both worked with Lidén previously in some context or other between Greenleaf and Dozer. Very much a drummer picking his bassists, which is probably what you want here. Erik Nilsson (Come Sleep, runs Version Studio in Stockholm) contributes guitar to highlight cut “I of Everything” — a hook to serve as landmark, and a righteous takeoff in its second half hitting its mark for post-metal’s requisite “Stones From the Sky” moment — as well as “Stalemates” and “For Redemption,” where Tommi Holappa (Dozer, Greenleaf) also adds the slide guitar that courses the melodic thread through the adrenaline-push crescendo. With Lidén‘s drums and keys at the core represented through his own signature production style — he gets a drum sound that is his own, period — the tracks on Kappa Delta Phi range far into atmospheric heavy and are willing to sound messy without being a mess, unfold into a landscape’s shimmer drone or dive into make-a-stinkface bludgeonry as “Born to Secrecy” nails its apex to your forehead. I count Vaka alongside Battle of Mice and SubRosa as an example of what I wish post-metal had evolved into.
5. Inevitably, I would finish by noting the never-say-never nature of rock and roll and life more generally, and perhaps wonder what might’ve been had Vaka done a second album or what might be if you rolled a 20 on a longshot and Lidén picked up the project again at some point. Not the most likely, not impossible, but for how much of Kappa Delta Phi is constructed around experiments in synth and keys laid over the drum tracks and then layered again with guitar, bass, more synth, vocals, etc., Lidén could have taken the band in any number of directions even just as regards his own songwriting, never mind putting together a lineup, playing live, or continuing with the ethic of guest performers. Whatever aesthetic elements might have been working in accord with the tenets of post-metal, Kappa Delta Phi was too much its own thing to be derivative, and wound up a singular expression and perhaps a footnote in a storied career, but only a footnote because not nearly enough people have heard this record.
And to go back to the top, I couldn’t decide which of these five approaches I wanted to take… so I took them all. For a collection that on paper might seem like a jumble but that proves coherent when engaged, it doesn’t seem like the least appropriate move. As always, I thank you for reading and hope you enjoy.
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Costco trip in a couple minutes, so I’m short on time. Need eggs, cheese, rug cleaner, a few other odds and ends. More possible during school hours, which are also my main writing hours these days. I’ve been playing a good bit of Zelda and relaxing some as well. The Patient Mrs. and I are doing a January yoga challenge that we also did last year, which I feel like a dork about but is actually awesome in the doing. Never underestimate the value of a good stretch in middle-age. That shit can make your whole day better.
The Patient Mrs. got sworn in on the Board of Education last night, so The Pecan and I rolled along (also like half my family was there) to see mommy continue to be amazing. We spent most of the time in a conference room down the hall with the Switch (kiddo also enjoys a good bit of Tears of the Kingdom and we mostly play as a family, but I do a decent bit of resource farming on my own as well because I’m compulsive and enjoy it), but she did get to be in the room for the actual thing. The board is divided politically, so her reasonable, ultra-competent, able-to-listen-and-process-and-then-respond-to-a-thing presence as a progressive can only be a boon. To say I am proud of her is laughable because she’s in another league entirely. I might as well be proud of the planet Jupiter.
Up and down week. The Pecan, super-punchy, mostly to The Patient Mrs. She’s got a long-term sub at school since her kindergarten teacher went out on maternity leave — till April rather than like the three years that are actually required for such a thing, because Americans are savages — and has never handled going from one thing to the other with smoothness generally. I don’t like having my routine upset either, if you couldn’t tell just from looking around this site, so I get where she’s coming from. She’s also not sleeping because ADHD drugs and being super-tired, super-resistant to the idea of laying down pretty much ever, and broadly given to ignoring you no less than 80 percent of the time when you ask her to do a thing, whether it’s go pee or grab a game to play — often that’s a question of her being hyperfocused on a thing, but yeah sometimes she’s just not giving a fuck — so perhaps it’s fair to note what success is being had despite the wobbly setup for it of late. I haven’t heard from the principal since at least early December for anything behavioral. The meds are working, which is a mantra. She lets me brush her hair. And sometimes, maybe once every day or two, you can say to please throw her socks in the wash or get her jacket and it’ll happen. It’s hard to remember after the tumult that defined the second half of 2023, but I don’t think that was the case last January, or at least not to the same proportion between the yes and no. We argue less than we used to, but I did say “bullshit” the other day when we were fighting to get her to take a bath. Ugh. In my defense, I was in the process of calling her a genius and telling her not to waste her time on bullshit. There are only so many hours in the day. Before dropoff this morning, The Patient Mrs. got the shit kicked out of her trying to put in pony tails for a school spirit day. We spend so much time doing that, we miss out on other stuff.
I also will note that I suck at and apparently don’t particularly enjoy fun. Fun is not fun for me. Fun is work. Fun is I gotta go to some place that I don’t want to be at, probably see a bunch of people, feel weird and put on and then do whatever wrong or badly and feel like garbage later. I’ve never been good at fun. I sucked at sports. I was fat and weird didn’t have a lot of friends. I wrote stories as a kid. I trudged around my neighborhood listening to Alice in Chains’ Dirt on my tape Walkman. This was my idea of a good time. What’s changed is that when you have a kid you have to go do all kinds of shit. You have to go to see things and be in places where people are and you have to pretend you feel normal doing any of it and it gets pretty wretched in my head. People talk about stuff that’s fun and I fear the word. Who the hell wants to get on a rollercoaster? Not even just for the fact that they’re shoddy or some safety concern. I mean who wants to get up, get dressed, leave their house to go to some expensive-ass theme park or some extra-rundown local thing or a town fair and go stand in line to get in, stand in line for tickets, stand in line for the ride, bake in the sun on a hot day, and then be shoved around and up and down in a machine at high speed, only to return to the ground like three minutes later expected to be grateful for the experience? Fuck that shit. I’ll stay home and eat a gummy.
And on that happy note, it’s time to go to Costco. I hope you have a great and safe weekend, and as always, I appreciate your time and value your being a part of this thing. Watch your head, don’t forget to hydrate, and I’ll be back on Monday with I don’t know probably a review and some more complaining about stuff, because I’m charming like that.
FRM.
We were all saddened last year to read that Swedish heavy rock legends Dozer were calling it even 
