Samavayo Premiere “Bavar” Lyric Video
I need to do a bit of disclosure here, so bear with me. First, I like Samavayo. I’ve been in touch with guitarist/vocalist Behrang Alavi from the Berlin-based trio for longer than I can at this moment remember, though it wasn’t until they played Planet Desert Rock Weekend (review here) early last year that we actualy got to hang out. I’ve covered the band a lot and consider them friends. Behrang‘s company hosts this site. I helped him with translating the Persian lyrics to “Bavar” — the video premiering below, taken from the band’s recent split with UK chums Alunah (review here) — into English for the lyric video premiering below. We talk on the regular. At this point, I kind of consider it doing myself a favor when I get to write about what they’re up to. So here I am, doing myself a favor.
And since this is the second premiere I’m doing from that split, obviously I like doing myself favors. Last time around it was the 10-minute “California Sky,” which the band wrote following the aforementioned trip to the US West Coast that included that stop in Vegas, and which was a 10-minute acoustic-based exploratory piece; more than a jam since there were lyrics, but an outlier in terms of sound. “Bavar,” at just under eight minutes, also has its sense of space, but hits hard, and is tense from the start as well as atmospheric and immersive. If you heard the band’s 2022 LP, Pāyān (review here), it’s not so far removed in terms of intention from there, which makes sense since that’s when it was recorded. It hits hard and is about love. I’m not sure what more you would ask of it.
The video below was made by Malachi Cull, and to be perfectly honest, my first question when I saw it was whether or not it was made with AI. If it had been, I probably wouldn’t be posting it. The environmental and ethical implications of using generative AI for art aside, it’s just not a conversation I want to have, so better to avoid. But I see slow pans over complex digitally-rendered environments, and yes, the alarm bells go off. Isn’t it kind of a bummer how quickly that stuff has kind of the dominant aesthetic of our time, to the point where I’m posting two videos today, this being one, and both feel compelled to point out that no AI was used in their making? That happened fast. Years from now when people look back on this wretched time, assuming there are still people to look back, what fools and savages we’ll have made ourselves out to be.
Unreal Engine, referenced in the video info below, is what’s used to make video games — like, a lot of them. It’s like an underlying digital skeleton on which one can lay the organs, muscle and skin of their own work, an infrastructure, that’s used by game designers far and wide. All those games you see where some character in a close third-person view is running through a big open world either ninja-jumping or swinging a giant sword at some even-more-giant monster? You got it. I’ve never seen it put to use like this before, but I know there are film directors who use it as well, so there you go.
Enjoy the video:
Samavayo, “Bavar” video premiere
Video by our beloved friend Malachi Cull: “No AI was used! I used prebuilt Unreal Engine environments, moved assets around, and created my own camera angles.”
https://linktr.ee/palantir.visuals
BAVAR is a crushing heavy piece built on the Fibonacci sequence, featuring Persian lyrics inspired by a poem from Siavash Kasraie. It stands as a defiant cry against grief and mortality—the narrator refuses to accept the death of loved ones, clinging instead to love, shared tears, and the breath of life as proof that loss can neither truly be believed nor surrendered to.
Bavar is a song, taken from the split album with Alunah, released on heavy psych sounds records in 2026.
Recorded along with the songs from the album Payan (2022) in Big Snuff Studio Berlin.
The lyrics are based on the poem of Siavash Kasraie “Bavar nemikonam” (باور نمی کنم , سیاوش کسرایی).
buy the song or the entire album digital, on vinyl or CD here:
https://heavypsychsoundsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/alunah-samavayo-embers-of-belief
Samavayo are:
Behrang Alavi – Vocals, Guitar
Arno Voland – Drums, Vocals, Didgeridoo, Percussions
Andreas Voland – Bass, Guitar, Vocals, Moog
Samavayo, “California Sky” official video
Alunah & Samavayo, Embers of Belief (2026)
Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp
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Heavy Psych Sounds on Facebook
Tags: Alunah, Alunah Samavayo Embers of Belief, Berlin, Birmingham, Embers of Belief, Germany, Heavy Psych Sounds, Samavayo, UK
