Empyre ready to return with new album Relentless next week

Northants rock quartet Empyre release their second album Relentless next week.

The record, which follows their 2019 debut Self Aware, comes on the back of both a sold-out LP launch gig at The Black Prince and a sold-out album playback at the town’s Filmhouse.

Empyre’s blend of intense atmospheric rock has won them fans across the county, seen them tour across the UK with Mason Hill and The Vintage Caravan and receive plaudits from the likes of Classic Rock Magazine and Kerrang!

Talking about both recent events to mark Relentless’ pending release, frontman Henrik Steenholdt said: “Selling out both the album playback and The Black Prince meant a lot.

“It was a bit of a shock to us, I think the last time we played there was supporting The Virginmarys, we had a good few people come down to see us, but this felt different.

“There was a good combination of hometown support and people travelling, we’ve played a lot at The King Billy before, but The Black Prince feels like our new found home.”

Empyre were poised to release Relentless themselves 12 months ago, until their manager presented the album to Kscope records - home of Tesseract, Porcupine Tree and The Pineapple Thief - who decided to sign the band.

Steenholdt said: “We started properly writing Relentless at the beginning of lockdown, which must be March 2020.

“We finished mixing it in December 2021 and were preparing this time last year to release it, then Dan, our manager, presented it to Kscope.

“We waited a month or so, they said they were interested and then we went through a negotiation process. It’s almost three years to the day since we started work on it.”

Despite the delay, lead guitarist Did Coles explains the band can’t wait for the album to finally be released.

He said: “A large part of the writing process was done during lockdowns and it was a really enjoyable process of bringing the other guys in with demos and recording it.

“It’s been a long time, but it’s a great album. So much work has gone into this record.”

Steenholdt and Coles are joined in Empyre by bassist Grant Hockley and drummer Elliot Bale.

The band returned to The Parlour studio in Kettering to record Relentless with Neil Haynes before handing mixing duties to Chris Clancy (Machine Head, Massive Wagons) at Audioworks.

Steenholdt said: “Neil knows exactly what we’re looking for and Chris added his touch, giving it a bit of brightness and airiness.”

After signing with Kscope, Empyre and the label set about releasing a run of singles from the forthcoming 10-track record.

Empyre released the album’s title track in October, then Parasites, Hit and Run and most recently, Waking Light which was released earlier this month.

Taking about their latest single, Coles said: “It’s a bit atmospheric, a bit anthemic and I’d say uplifting for us.

“Musically and sonically it’s different. We’re using a baritone guitar, which is good for Henrik’s voice.

“The choruses are still hard hitting, there’s plenty of hooks you can sing along with and it’s one of the biggest songs on the album.”

Comparing relentless to their 2019 debut, Steenholdt said: “Self Aware came out when we were developing and growing our fan base but there’s enough ‘Empyre’, enough familiarity in Relentless that makes us sure the hardcore fans will enjoy it. But there’s a lot of new stuff.

“Songs like Road To Nowhere could be on Self Aware, it’s quite straight forward hard-rock and then you’ve got tracks like Waking Light, Hit and Run and Your Whole Life Slow which show that development.”

During the writing of Relentless, Steenholdt was learning more orchestration techniques, elements of which have been built into the record.

Picking their favourite tracks on Relentless, Coles picks recent single Hit and Run, explaining “it’s so different to anything we've done before,” before joking, “It’s in a major key,”.

Steenholdt however, picks Forget Me.

“It’s quintessential Empyre,” he says.

“It starts with an acoustic guitar, then Did’s guitar, then my vocal and it gets bigger and bigger, there’s a piano part in the middle, it has a big ending and there’s a massive guitar solo.

“Lyrically, it was a track inspired mainly by a book by South African philosopher David Benatar called Better Never To Have Been.

“It’s the idea you can't experience life without experiencing pain, therefore, there’s an argument it’s just better to have never existed.

“I came up with an acoustic part and I wasn't really thinking about that, but the first line which came into my head was ‘I’ll start with goodbye’.

“I had this idea of someone going to an old friend or mentor and had made a logical and recent decision, to say, ‘I’m done with life, I've got the best out of it, I’m going to go off and kill myself - but I'm telling you so no one thinks anything different of me, I’ve just decided it’s not for me.’

“The verses are written from the perspective of the person telling someone that and then the chorus from the perspective that that person's dead, saying ‘don’t worry about me, forget me, it’s all cool’.

“That’s nothing from a personal perspective, I just like the idea of a different perspective on life.”

Members of Empyre originally came together in 2008. Coles and Steenholdt met via the (now defunct) Northampton Bands website and they started out playing covers.

Their first gig playing original material as Empyre was in 2016 when they opened for Black Orchid Empire at the former Zombie Hut venue in Corby.

Relentless is available on CD and a limited edition red vinyl.

To mark its release the band will be embarking on a pub crawl across Northampton which begins at 4pm at The Cordwainer on Friday, March 31, which fans are invited to join.

They will also be playing an ‘in-store’ session at HMV in Northampton on Sunday, April 2, at 1pm and signing copies of the album.

On April 22, there will be another album release show at KK’s Steel Mill in Wolverhampton.

Empyre are hoping to tour Relentless, but other key dates in the diary this summer include the Steelhouse Festival in Wales in July, where they will share the stage with the likes of Black Stone Cherry, Elegant Weapons and The Vintage Caravan.

For more information, visit https://www.empyre.co.uk