Swedish post-punk multi-instrumentalist songwriter Henrik Palm, who was a member of GHOST from 2015 until 2016, will release a new solo album, “Poverty Metal”, on October 16 via Svart Records. The official music video for the disc’s latest single, “Given Demon”, can be seen below.
“Poverty Metal” track listing:
01. Bully
02. Sugar
03. Concrete Antichrist
04. Given Demon
05. Destroyer
06. Nihil
07. Nihilist
08. Last Christmas
From his work with an almost limitless multitude of acts such as IN SOLITUDE‘s renewal of heavy metal, darlings of the underrated underground PIG EYES, his stint in GHOST, prog rock grandmasters GÖSTA BERLINGS SAGA, punk veterans ISOTOPE SOAP and experimental weirdos SÖDRA SVERIGE, Palm is a post-punk, heavy-pop sonic contortionist of the finest order. From being hand-picked for Tomas Lindberg‘s (AT THE GATES) curated Roadburn festival performance to opening for acts like VOIVOD and winning the hearts of well-known fans such as Jacob Bannon (CONVERGE) and Scott Carlson (REPULSION), Palm has been blowing all of us away for good a while now. Everything we’re looking for in a fresh and modern genre clash, Henrik‘s music is catchy, well-crafted, beautiful and ugly in the same intense and challenging moment. Impossible to define, Palm is a perfect reflection of his eclectic tastes and infamously insatiable vinyl collection, fitting Svart‘s groundbreaking roster perfectly.
Tomi Pulkki from Svart says: “What Henrik Palm creates with his songs of diverse influence is a rare explosion of outlandish and captivating rock that we’re really excited to present to a wider world. It’s not often that an artist can have us dancing to VOIVOD-ian discordant riffs and prog excursions with that Swedish knack for a well-crafted song. We’re getting ready to administer ‘Poverty Metal’ to the masses.”
Palm moves freely between record collections and worlds. Between KILLING JOKE, CRASS and PSYCHIC TV, but also between HP Lovecraft and Dr. Who. Decibel dubs his sound as “raw rock and roll with a punk edge and a profound sense of weirdness,” and his undiscovered terrain lies between the deeply private and the anarchist spiritual, intertwining cronky, angular postcore riffs with kraut and shoegaze influences. The songs lie in the room like a ghost, heavy breathing.
Henrik says: “I love to experiment with weird instruments, tunings and anything that makes the song better, creepier, more beautiful or whatever. Fuck genres. Identity and feeling is more important,” and his music is a wildly fresh distortion of conventions.
According to Palm, seventy percent of his musical diet consists of raw punk with some TROUBLE, CELTIC FROST, THROBBING GRISTLE and MY BLOODY VALENTINE to round things out.
Palm is one of four former members of GHOST who filed a lawsuit against the band’s founder and main songwriter, Tobias Forge, in 2017. The four musicians accused the vocalist, who performs under the stage names Papa Emeritus and Cardinal Copia, of cheating them out of their rightful share of the profits from the band’s album releases and world tours.
In a statement explaining the lawsuit, the ex-members officially revealed their identities as Palm (Eather), Simon Söderberg (Alpha; member of GHOST from 2010 until 2016), Mauro Rubino (Air; member of GHOST from 2011 until 2016) and Martin Hjertstedt (Earth; member of GHOST from 2014 until 2016).
The Swedish-based act underwent a complete overhaul at the end of 2016, when Forge fired the entire lineup and recruited new players.
Forge — who does all the band’s interviews as a Nameless Ghoul — has said that GHOST has always been essentially a one-man project, with many session musicians coming and going over its 12-year existence.
