EPK – Nightwraith – Divergence (2024) – Out Sept 13th
Publicist – Jon Asher – jon[@]ashermediarelations[.]com
“I know it sounds cliche, but we really wanted Divergence to take listeners on a sonic journey. There are many layers, and the idea was for people to hear something new upon each listen. The album is intended to lift you up with major melodies, evoke emotion with harmonic minors, and harken overall feelings of nostalgia and hope. The single ‘Perpetual Night’ is a good example of a driving heavy-metal song that is catchy but epic. It checks all the NightWraith boxes by having hooks accompanied by clever vocals, a dynamic drop-off that brings the energy down, and some really epic solos. The other single ‘Whispers of Dragonflies’ is an even more extreme example of this formula. It starts with a nostalgic-sounding synth melody, goes into a fast chorus, and has a clean middle section that showcases more of our classic rock influences. As the energy in this song gradually picks back up, there is a beautiful flute solo by Kelly Schilling (Dreadnought) that ends with the same chorus from the beginning, making it a ‘circular’ type of song.” – Benn Pitts – Nightwraith
For fans of Tribulation, Opeth, Mastodon, Enslaved, Judas Priest
Band: Nightwraith
Album Title: Divergence
Release Date: September 13, 2024
Label/Distribution: What’s Left Records
Nightwraithband.com | Facebook.com/nightwraithband | Instagram.com/nightwraithband | Youtube.com/@nightwraithband5142 | Twitter.com/nightwraithband
Nightwraith.bandcamp.com | Spotify | Apple Music | Soundcloud.com/nightwraithband
“As you’ll quickly discover, in its opening phase it (Whispers of Dragonflies) presents an unusual amalgam of futuristic swirling keyboards and full-throttle blackened ferocity replete with raking chords, hammering drums, and scalding vocals. But it does begin changing, like a musical chameleon. Those changes include a beautifully ringing guitar melody backed by shimmering synths, musing bass tones, and gripping drum fills, and fronted by somber and melancholy singing with a bit of grit in the gears. That phase is a sublime experience, made even more sublime by a guitar solo that sounds like a beguiling prog-rock throwback. The intensity builds again, but without sacrificing the music’s increasingly head-spinning beauty, and that paves the way for the afore-mentioned concert-flute solo, which is flat-out mesmerizing. As also mentioned, the song then loops back to its beginning — hammering, slashing, scalding, and swirling once more, fierce but also glorious. The song is presented with a beautifully filmed video of the band performing the music. Enjoy!” – NoCleanSinging (Whispers of Dragonflies off album Divergence 2024)
“The ringing guitar and keyboard instrumental that opens the song (Beguiler) is magically inviting, but only one feature of a richly tapestried piece that moves through many moods and musical variations. As the song ebbs and flows, twists and turns, it crosses through shade and sun, traversing the gloom of sorrow, seething with tension, and spinning the mind with extended guitar jams that dart and dance, slither and swirl, and become trippy, bluesy, and occult. While all that happens, the rhythm section are putting on their own show. The bass hums and pulses, meanders and invigorates, and the drumming ranges from neck-snapping back-beats to open-handed blasts, with plenty of electrifying fills in the spaces between. Variations mark the vocals as well, which veer from rasping blackened snarls to guttural growls.” – No Clean Singing (Nightwraith – Offering 2022)
“Nightwraith brings their own unique blackened heavy metal to the table with their new record Offering. It’s an extremely cool listened rife with throat-shredding vocals, classic rock organs, and of course dizzying stringwork.” – Metal Injection (Nightwraith – Offering 2022)
““Genesthai” opens with quiet echoey guitar picking and synth washes before gradually building in intensity and reaching full blast-beat fury. Throughout the six-minute track, NightWraith—vocalist/guitarist Benjamin Pitts, drummer Isidro Soto, guitarist Igor Panasewicz, keyboardist Caleb Jose Tardio and bassist Jerry Hilger—shift comfortably between more extreme death- and black metal-influenced passages and a more classic metal gallop, all while maintaining a strong melodic sensibility. It’s dynamic, intricate and, well, it flows.” – Decibel Magazine (Nightwraith – Offering 2022)
“The ‘Blackened Dad Rock’ of Denver’s NightWraith A new metal subgenre.” Westword (Denver) (Nightwraith – Offering 2022)
Band: Nightwraith
Album Title: Divergence
Release Date: September 13, 2024
Label/Distribution: What’s Left Records
Track Listing:
1. Fruitless (5:15)
2. Perpetual Night (5:13) ft. guest Cole Rudy – Pedal Steel Guitar
3. One Flower (5:14) ft. guest Andreas Wild – Baritone Saxophone
4. Whispers of Dragonflies (5:27) ft. guest Kelly Schilling – Concert Flute
5. Invocation (2:19) ft. guest Joey Truscelli – Guitar Solo
6. Fallen Kings and Queens (4:20) ft. guests Dan Phelps & Chuck French – Backup Vocals
7. Nothing Left to Lose (3:24)
8. Divergence (5:20) ft. guests Jeremy Portz & Xander Galvin-Soto – Auxiliary Percussion
9. Us and Them (bonus Pink Floyd cover) (5:18)
Album Length: 42:08
Album Recording Credits:
• All songs performed by: NightWraith
• All songs written by: Benjamin Pitts and NightWraith
Except ‘Us and Them’ – written by: D. Gilmour, N. Mason, R. Waters, R. Wright
• Produced/Engineered by: Jacob St. Amand and NightWraith
• Mixed/Mastered by: Zack Ohren
• Album Artwork by: Jef Kopp
Guest Musicians:
Cole Rudy – pedal steel guitar on Perpetual Night
Andreas Wild – baritone saxophone on One Flower
Kelly Schilling – concert flute on Whispers of Dragonflies
Joey Truscelli – guitar solo on Invocation
Dan Phelps & Chuck French – backup vocals on Fallen Kings and Queens
Jeremy Portz & Xander Galvin-Soto – auxiliary percussion on Divergence
Album / Live Band Line Up:
Benjamin Pitts: vocals/guitar
Isidro ‘Spy’ Soto: drums
Igor Panasewicz: guitar
Caleb Jose Tardio: keyboards/synthesizer
Jacob St. Amand: bass
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About The Album Artwork
The artwork was done by our talented friend Jef Kopp who is a renowned tattoo artist, and fantastic human. It is drawn by hand, with colored pencil, permanent marker, watercolor marker, and paint, and it captures some really bleak and post-apocalyptic feelings. We use the Greek god Pan as the centerpiece for many of our albums and merch designs, as he’s become a mascot of sorts for our band. The vision for the album artwork was for Pan to be in the future, taking stock of the wasteland that humanity has created, but offering a glimmer of hope that the course can still be corrected. This ties in with our band philosophy that music does make the world a better place, and unites all of us as people.
About the album as a whole (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY)
Musically, the songs on ‘Divergence’ often utilize classic songwriting structures (verse/chorus/bridge/lead). Each individual instrument is not overly complicated, but when layered on top of each other, the music has a lot of depth. Even with the guitars, we always try to play different chord voicings to create a fatter tone. This might not even be very perceptible unless you were to break it down in the mix, then you could hear that each guitar is playing similar notes but at different neck and fret positions. The drums are fast with lots of big rock fills and the choice to use fast double bass and blast beats was meant to give the album a driving, more ‘classic’ metal sound. The keyboards/synthesizer tones are the icing on the cake and are what really color the album in a nostalgic-sounding way. The melodies that were written to lay on top of the guitars are what give the songs the musical complexity that can be rare within the heavy metal genre. There are also a lot of solos on this album, but none of them are overly ‘shreddy’ and are meant to serve the song, not the player. We also stepped up the production on this album by recruiting some talented guest musicians to contribute and added extra rhythmic layers using acoustic guitar and percussive instruments like cowbells and shakers. Then we stepped up the production again by involving producer Zack Ohren (Machine Head, Immolation) to mix and master the project, which gave it a top-shelf-sounding production quality!
Lyrically, I feel like I really put myself out there and I did not hold anything back. At times it seems like our world is crumbling, for many reasons, and the lyrics are an honest representation of the frustration many of us feel. But there is also the element of hope and positivity, which is a unifying theme between the lyrics of all NightWraith songs. I feel that if I only aired grievances without offering any solutions, then I’m just complaining and that is not very helpful. Although real solutions could be a tough pill to swallow for many people, this is the risky part of saying what you really feel since it leaves you open to criticism. But I don’t give a fuck about that anymore, so I’ll say what I want to say. People kill each other over religious ideals, so embrace a Godless way of life. Technology is destroying our mental health so put down the phone and re-establish a relationship with nature. The environment is falling apart so stop eating animals. Capitalism doesn’t work for everyone so try to help the people around you. This is along the lines of what I mean, and are all themes that are touched on in the lyrical content of ‘Divergence’.
Track by track (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY)
Fruitless: this might be one of our most musical songs because it has multiple key modulations and a proggy bridge section. We felt it was a good opener to the album because it’s not overly aggressive, has a chorus that’s easy to sing along with, but still has blast beats. It’s a good overall representation of the sound of ‘Divergence’ and foreshadows what can be expected in the rest of the songs. There is also a short clean vocal section in the bridge with one of my favorite lines on the record: “We’re better off, skeptical and Godless.” This ties into the lyrical theme of the album, that after years of spiritual searching, we have only found it through music and not any type of religion or deity. I’m sure plenty of people can relate to this feeling which is why I wanted to write about it. There is also a Rudolf Steiner quote during the bridge that helps button up the lyrical concepts around natural law and ancient wisdom.
Perpetual Night: this song could be the most ‘classic NightWraith’ song on the album, it’s got it all! It has a catchy black metal sound to it, a dynamic bridge section that brings the energy way down and picks back up with back-to-back guitar/keyboard solos, plus the chorus is fun to sing along with. Lyrically, this song is about how our global society is kind of blindly going all-in on technology, and how we should maybe take a step back and re-establish a connection to nature. In my experience, I get much more meaning from life through the physical world around us, and not through the dopamine-driven logic of tech. The lyrics also explore what our world might look like if we continue down this path, which is the overarching theme of the album: “Colorless dreams in perpetual night”.
One Flower: this song wins the award for most solos! The bridge section, also has one of my favorite guitar riffs on the entire album, which captures a cool 80s kind of vibe. There are killer back-to-back guitar solos and a really fitting saxophone solo performed by the talented Andreas Wild of The Night Sweats. Lyrically, this is probably the most pissed and anarcho-punk out of all the songs, as it’s mostly about the many failures of capitalism. Additionally, the lyrics were inspired by a publication titled ‘Expect Resistance’ where the forward highly encourages anyone to plagiarize or reproduce the contents with or without citing the sources, so I am definitely not the first person to use these analogies. But for all of the frustrations expressed in the lyrics, there is also an offering of hope: “Where one flower blooms, more will follow”. This theme of hope also ties into the album artwork, where you may notice a single flower growing in a pile of rubble.
Whispers of Dragonflies: this song really showcases our musical range, and has a cool ‘circular’ song structure which makes it really stand out on the album. The song kicks off with a John Carpenter-style synth intro. The main riff for the beginning/end of the song is very intense, and then the song has a dynamic shift to clean guitars that help the synth chords really shine through. The vocals go clean for this section too, but have enough grit on them to sound haunting. There is also a clean guitar solo, a rock fusion section with a synth interlude that sends you to outer space, and a lovely flute solo performed by our friend Kelly Schilling from the band Dreadnought. Lyrically, this is a poem I wrote about about an area in Colorado called the Lost Creek Wilderness. My Dad took me there for a multi-day backpacking trip when I was a kid, and the area completely blew my mind. I still return every few years and hike the same 25-mile loop I did with my Dad when I was young. It’s an inspiring area in the Pike National Forest and I highly recommend visiting if you ever have the means.
Invocation: this is an instrumental track and picks up where the song ‘Offering’ (from our previous album) leaves off. It’s interesting because this song takes the two main riffs from Offering and stacks them on top of each other, creating somewhat of a ‘movement’ and putting a fresh twist on the original parts. This song also starts with a proggy ‘King Crimson-esque’ keyboard solo, and ends with an incredible guitar solo performed by our friend Joey Truscelli from the band Wayfarer.
Fallen Kings and Queens: this song starts with a bang and goes directly into one of three verses that have a driving ‘NWOBHM’ cadence to them. Between the bridge with harmonized guitars, the melodic chorus, and a 4 bar drum solo, this is definitely the ballad on the album. Lyrically, this is our most emotional song because it’s written for some friends of ours who are no longer with us. There are three verses in this song, each written for an inspirational Denver artist whose life was tragically cut short. The goal was to use this as a way for us to personally heal from these losses, but non-specific enough that a listener could also apply the meaning to any fallen loved ones in their lives. Guest vocals were performed by our friends Dan Phelps and Chuck French, who were both closely connected to the fallen.
Nothing Left to Lose: every NightWraith album has one song that falls within the umbrella of punk/hardcore, and this is that song! It includes a combination of riffs from the toolshed that needed a home, but they all work together perfectly. The chorus riff is actually a play on the main riff from ‘The Sentinal’ by Judas Priest, one of my all-time favorite Priest songs. The verses have one of the coolest-sounding drum sections on the record, and the bridge has an awesome half-time breakdown – but its also very melodic so it fits perfectly with the rest of the album. Lyrically, this one is pretty cynical. It’s about how being in bands for many years has been all-consuming and caused issues in other aspects of my life, namely relationships and jobs. As pessimistic as the lyrics are they certainly ring true, and anyone in a band or in the music industry can probably relate. There’s a line in the song that reinforces an unhealthy stereotype about artists, but it’s fitting: “the best songs occur when we’re tortured”.
Divergence: musically, this song is our most cinematic sounding, which is why it is the title track of the album. It starts with a rhythmic verse that is followed by a huge blues guitar lick. This sets the stage for the second act of the song which is an arrangement of super melodic chords on top of some furious blasting. There is an awesome rhythmic section that we lovingly refer to as the ‘Deftones’ riff, then a break in the song that includes an auxiliary percussion section performed by our friend (and Abhoria bandmate) Jeremy Portz. Our drummer’s kiddo Xander also recorded some bongos on this percussion section, and it was really cool having a new generation involved! The end of the song has a super climactic synth section with blast beats underneath it, again lending to the cinematic quality of this track. Since this song is divided into two halves, the lyrics represent two possible paths that humanity could go down in regard to technology, specifically AI. If this technology is left unchecked, it could have disastrous consequences for everyone. This also ties into the cover art which represents the destruction of humanity and civilization, and is even represented by the ½ and ½ color vinyl scheme. It’s not all doom and gloom though, there’s still time to unify as people and put some guardrails in place. This might also be a good time to mention that this album was 100% written and produced by humans, no AI whatsoever was used in the making of this record!
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STORY ANGLES / FUN FACTS ABOUT THE BAND
1: NightWraith has over 100 years of combined musical experience because we’re all old haha!
2: One time someone tried to break into our van through the side window, but the joke was on them because the door was busted and did not open! Unfortunately, we had an out-of-town show a few days later, and the exhaust system clogged up on our way home. So we were moving at a max speed of 35 mph all the way home, with a broken window, at night, in the dead of winter. It was so cold that Igor and Caleb had to pull out the emergency blanket to stay warm, which was actually kind of adorable.
3: Ben and Spy used to play together in a legit Dethklok tribute band! And Joey (Wayfarer) who did the guitar solo on our song ‘Invocation’, was the ‘Swisgaar’ of the band and executed all of those leads not for note – super impressive!
4: Caleb has earned a doctorate in English literature, so technically there’s a Dr. in the band!
5: Igor runs several restaurants around Denver/Boulder named Quiero Aerepas, and serves authentic Venezuelan street food. Igor is also the only member who previously made a living as a professional musician – in South America!
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L-R – Caleb Jose Tardio – Keyboards/Synthesizer, Igor Panasewicz – Guitar, Isidro “Spy” Soto – Drums, Jacob St. Amand – Bass, Benjamin Pitts – Vocals/Guitar
Photo Credit – Josh Massara
NightWraith is a melodic death metal band from Denver, CO that explores the genre with an eclectic and intuitive approach. Their music encompasses poignant themes: seeking the sublime in nature, being genuine in a deceptive world, and living with the idea of death—concepts that unite us all as people. Using haunting melodies and triumphant anthems, NightWraith offers listeners a sonic pilgrimage into the heart of being human.
The band was formed in 2016 without any preconceived notion of genre, allowing them to develop their sound organically. “Gone are the days of trying to be the fastest or heaviest band,” says founding member Benjamin Pitts. “We’ve already done bands like that and now we just want to write music that is fun to play and meaningful to us.” The members of NightWraith have been musical companions for over a decade in the Denver scene, but this lineup achieves its own unique approach to aggressive music, inspired by but not limited to the past.
After releasing a self-titled album in 2019, Nightwraith gained notoriety and played shows with heavy hitters like ‘Khemmis’ and ‘Green Druid’, but they were still developing their sound and being called to a new musical frontier.
During 2020, a year filled with anxiety and isolation, the band would finally have the time and freedom to create the next chapter of their story. Their new full-length, “Offering”, is a monumental effort that has turned some heads in the death metal circuit and beyond. With the addition of a new member in early 2021 (keyboards/synthesizer), the band broadened the scope of their exploration, making “Offering” an experience that is both aggressive and textural.
Pulling inspiration from a wide array of bands and genres, NightWraith has been sonically refined into something truly unique. “It’s like we took all the heavy parts from bands like Carcass, and Enslaved, and combined it with the warmth of classic bands like Thin Lizzy, and Blue Oyster Cult”, explains Ben. “It has been really fun inserting rock guitar and organ tones into a genre that typically avoids these types of sounds.” Additionally, the songwriting on “Offering” is deliberate, concise, and thoughtful, while remaining heavy enough to please the death metal audience for which it was intended.
As NightWraith continues to evolve, it is clear that their ambitions are paying off. “Offering” is expressive, inventive, joyful, sorrowful, and will certainly inspire its listeners. “Offering” was released on March 25th, 2022 and is available on digital/analog formats through Reaping Scythe Records.
In 2024, the band will be unleashing their follow-up “Divergence” from What’s Left Records.
Discography:
2024 – Divergence – LP
2022 – Offering – LP
2019 – Self-Titled – LP
2017 – Demo – cassette
Shared the stage with:
Khemmis
Orbit Culture
Abigail Williams
Nite
Vale of Pnath
Bewitcher
Glacial Tomb
Of Feather and Bone
Green Druid
Necropanther
Cyborg Octopus
Cloud Catcher
Smokey Mirror
Native Daughters
Bleakheart
Velnias
Festivals:
Denver Hex Fest – 2019 (Pig Destroyer, Lightning Bolt, The Body, Author and Punisher, Dreadnought)
Decemburger Fest – 2017 (Bongripper, Serial Hawk, Call of the Void, Vermin Womb, The Munsens, Abrams)
Music Placements: Flow Right Plumbing – Phone Jingle
L-R – Reilly Williams – Drums, Shawn Maynard – Guitar, Lead Vox, Mike Cheney – Bass, Vox)
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