Swedish multi-instrumentalist PER WIBERG will release his brilliant new solo EP, All Is Well In The Land Of The Living, But For The Rest Of Us... Lights Out, on May 14th via Despotz Records.
A sonic craftsman of the highest order, WIBERG’s work has illuminated an array of classic albums (and stages) over the years performing with the likes of Opeth, Spiritual Beggars, and Candlemass as well as Clutch/The Bakerton Group, Switchblade, and Kamchatka to name just a few. However, it’s WIBERG’s solo work that serves as the pinnacle of his odyssey through music. Over three decades of expertise culminate into a sound that is distinctly PER WIBERG’s own, with Classic Rock describing it as, “sometimes reminiscent of the distant beauty of Steven Wilson, sometimes of the industrial hypothermia of Nine Inch Nails, and sometimes of simply nothing that existed before him.”
In 2019, WIBERG released his debut solo offering Head Without Eyes, consummating his career as a musician with an eruption of soulful song. Nordic prog in a gnawing stew of jolting guitar notes, jangling bones, and emotive melodies, the critically-lauded recording laid bare a beautifully uncharted new terrain that outstripped the laurels of his past and solidified his strong presence as a unique solo artist in his own right.
Aptly titled for these turbulent times, WIBERG’s latest EP, All Is Well In The Land Of The Living, But For The Rest Of Us... Lights Out, is a commanding celebration of innovative rock at its best. Expanding and further evolving his vision, WIBERG adeptly paints the definitive and familiar paradigms of golden age progressive rock with spirited and electrifying twists of dark tone. Listening to a master weave his deep spells, from shadow to light, we are at once entranced and delighted in equal measure as PER WIBERG brews a potent concoction that’s captivating, catchy and forever expansive and impassioned. From tracks like “All Is Well,” which comes across like Young Gods gone prog, to the haunting and avant-garde “But for The Rest Of Us,” which basks in dark improv in the vein of Alice Coltrane/Sun Ra, WIBERG unfolds his sound out in blankets of fresh atmosphere. “In The Land Of The Living” smashes latter era Sonic Youth alt rock into the heavy fuzzing riffs of King Crimson/Hawkwind with a bassline that has you hitting the steering-wheel across bleak highways while “Lights Out” lies on the melancholic side of Dark Side Of The Moon with Ulver at their most post-pop and early Porcupine Tree at their most anthemic. If you want to hear Swedish progressive metal taken to the next level of dark melodic exploration, you will find your black heart shrouded in a very different kind of heavy with All Is Well In The Land Of The Living...
PER WIBERG’s All Is Well In The Land Of The Living, But For The Rest Of Us... Lights Out will be released on LP and digital formats. Find physical preorders at THIS LOCATION and digital orders HERE.
All Is Well In The Land Of The Living, But For The Rest Of Us... Lights Out Track Listing:
1. All Is Well
2. In The Land Of The Living
3. But For The Rest Of Us...
4. Lights Out
“Dark and sinister times indeed. The combination of the discordant and the harmonic, the sparse and the monolithic often to devastating effect, is impossible to defy…” -- Louder Than War
