Kristoffer Nyströms Orkester — Overlook Hotel

Estes Park, Colorado, late seventies. Struggling with alcohol and temper issues and hoping to give his family life and literary aspirations a fresh start, recently dismissed teacher Jack Torrance accepts a position as winter caretaker in an isolated resort somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. This, in short, is the premise of the third novel by then ascending US horror writer Stephen King, adapted onto film by renowned director Stanley Kubrick only a couple of years later and starring a tormented Jack Nicholson in the role of the main protagonist who does but little know at the time that his relocation will mark the beginning of a slow, tormented downfall that will eventually lead to his death. Both book and film are called ‘The Shining’ and the place where Jack lands his fateful position Overlook Hotel.

Scandinavia, thirty odd years later. The aptly-titled Kristoffer Nyströms Orkester (KNO) is the collaborative project of death industrial veteran Peter Nyström and 33-year old Norwegian musician Kristoffer Oustad. The former helped establish the reputation of Swedish industrial music back in the nineties with institutions like Megaptera and Negru Voda while the latter made his main claim to fame as guitar player in the now disbanded industrial black metal outfit V:28, who released a handful of albums on Vendlus Records in the noughties and bowed out with a star-studded remix compilation on Cold Meat Industry in 2008. The two men first got together about a decade ago, mixing their creative juices on a rather confidential demo entitled ‘BRAKEhead’. One of the twenty (!) copies in circulation somehow found its way to the Malignant Records offices, prompting the label to flesh it out with a bonus track and make it more widely available in 2006 (it was, incidentally, renamed ‘brakeHEAD’ in the process). Released last year by the Maryland-based imprint, ‘Overlook Hotel’ is the band’s first proper full-length release.

Bearing its title in mind, it should come as no surprise that this album isn’t exactly intended as the ideal soundtrack for a Sunday walk in the park. Instead, this modern take on the 1980 horror classic throws you headlong into a nightmarish world filled to the brim with disturbing noises and anguished voices, each track (interestingly enough, the CD and LP versions have different song titles so I am not going to name any lest you think I am reviewing the wrong album) taking the listener down dimly-lit, red-carpeted corridors and cracking the door open into deserted rooms where the musty scent of untold tragedies is sure to leave an indelible trace into their brain.

The looped Ruth Edding rendition of the 1920s ‘Love Me or Leave Me’ popular song that introduces the album first lulls you into a strangely hypnotic melancholy mood when slowly ascending noise rumbles begin to blur the idyllic picture that started to form into your mind and announce the impending doom that follows. The next – and first proper – track is a highly effective and creepy sound fest reminiscent of the glory (read bone-chilling) days of Swedish death-industrial which slowly turns into a more rhythmic and slightly noisier version of itself to become frankly addictive towards the end. It features the kind of claustrophobic ambiance that will accompany the frightened listener for the next forty minutes, each of the succeeding tracks taking them on a nerve-wracking tour of the sordid resort and revealing another, terrifying aspect of the place. At times noisy and unapologetically rhythmic, at times slow and mournful but always devoid of any glimpse of hope or ray of light, the music is often complemented by chilling samples that send the level of scariness into new heights. By the time the album ends with a hauntingly serene tune that once again brings back to life the ghost of early days CMI, you can’t help but feel the need to go out for a short walk and feel a breeze of fresh air on your face.

It is fair to say that whatever they set out do when they decided to give the iconic Stanley Kubrick blockbuster an aural treatment, Peter and Kristoffer rose up to the challenge. From ‘The Shining’ to ‘Psycho’, novelists and film directors have long understood the narrative potential of desolate mansions and assorted forlorn buildings. It is nice to see musicians carrying the torch and transposing those images into sounds. The Swede’s long-established reputation and the Norwegian’s undisputed talent all combine to make ‘Overlook Hotel’ a solid and convincing death industrial album which should delight fans of Bocksholm, Deutsch Nepal or Brighter Death Now and prove a worthy addition to anyone’s collection.