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Video Interview: Stephen Flam of Göden on Continuing Winter’s Legacy, Pushing Beyond Darkness

Göden stephen flam

Punishingly heavy and bleak in its atmospheric density to a point of being oblique, Göden‘s years-in-the-making debut album, Beyond Darkness (review here), arrived amid the somehow-fitting chaos of Spring 2020 through respected purveyors Svart Records. The band, led by guitarist/songwriter Stephan Flam, has been intended since the outset — really, since before the outset — to function as a spiritual successor to Flam‘s prior unit, New York death-doom trailblazers Winter, and the truth of the matter is Göden is simply on another level altogether. Yes, Flam is joined by former Winter keyboardist Tony Pinnisi, who doubles as narrator for the eight spoken interludes — dubbed “Manifestations” — spread across the 2LP, but with an array of drummers and fellow guitarists, violinist Margaret Murphy and vocalist Vas Kallas (best known for her work as a founding member of industrialists Hanzel und Gretyl), the entire scope of the project is different.

Beyond Darkness is an encompassing, engrossing, massive narrative slab of extreme doom, telling the story of humanity’s hubris and downfall in the face of an uncaring universe. It is not easy listening or reading, and in line with the amount of composition and effort that’s gone into its realization is the awareness and forcefulness of its purpose. These songs, as Flam tells it from his home studio in the interview below, push nearly as far back as 30 years to Winter‘s landmark 1990 full-length, Into Darkness (discussed here), and I can remember running into Flam at Roadburn 2011 (review here) when he was there to play the Main Stage with Winter and having him talk about the next phase of the project. In the vein of Triptykon modernizing and expanding on the skeleton that was Celtic Frost, so too does Göden flesh out the devastating possibilities of what could’ve been into what is.

And, of course, what still might be.

Because there is more Göden in the works, continuing the storyline of Beyond Darkness, which ends at a point of death-as-rebirth. Flam is guarded in talking about what might be in store sound-wise, but the basic template for what one might expect is there in the first album, waiting to swallow you entirely for its brazenly grandiose 76-minute span. Heavy like collapsing buildings, it is.

Flam talks past, present and future in the video chat that follows.

Please enjoy:

Göden, Interview with Stephen Flam, Aug. 10, 2021

Göden‘s Beyond Darkness is out now on all formats through Svart Records. More info at the links.

Göden, Beyond Darkness (2020)

Göden on Facebook

Göden on Instagram

Göden website

Svart Records on Facebook

Svart Records on Instagram

Svart Records on Bandcamp

Svart Records website

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