STORM CORROSION featuring MIKAEL ÅKERFELDT and STEVEN WILSON release more details about reissue of debut album
21-08-2024
As two of the leading figures in contemporary progressive music, Steven Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt have treated their fans to all sorts of thrillingly unconventional and atmospheric sounds over the years. But even by their own talismanic standards, the duo’s 2012 collaboration as STORM CORROSION exists in its own psychedelic lane of peculiarity, throwing listeners into a world of haunting and unsettling ambience like no other.
Some 12 years on from its original release, the album will be reissued on September 27 via Kscope on LP, CD and Blu-ray forms with a new Dolby Atmos remix by Steven Wilson. It will include a bonus cut of “Drag Ropes” — the only song they’ve performed live to date — recorded when Mikael guested with Steven and his band at London’s Royal Albert Hall in September 2015, plus extra documentary insights and footage. Given how the album clearly holds a special place in the hearts of both of its creators, and naturally their collective army of fans around the world, the new release will be a timely celebration of the ethereal magick encased within its six ground-breaking tracks.
A love letter to the esoteric and abstruse sounds of the past, crossing the mystifying noises of late ’60s/early ’70s German groups like TANGERINE DREAM and POPOL VUH with the sound of British folk heroes like Nick Drake and Bert Jansch, while also embracing the eclectic oddities of cult figures like Scott Walker, it’s the kind of album that takes you on a transcendental journey that you never really come back from. For the two friends, this kind of fierce originality is precisely what they set out to achieve…
“STORM CORROSION was the 2012 album made by myself and Mikael Åkerfeldt of the band OPETH, and one which both of us considered a deeply satisfying artistic success,” says Steven. “It remains one of my favorite releases in my whole catalogue. Part of what made it so much fun was that pretty much anything that either of us suggested, the other would agree it should definitely be pursued, no matter how crazy and off the wall it sounded.”
That sense of pride is shared by his accomplice Mikael Åkerfeldt, who feels it’s easily one of the most experimental, if not bizarre, things either of them have ever recorded, and all the better for it. For him, and countless others, these enigmatic recordings seem to exist in a genre of their own — at times sounding more acoustic and minimalistic, and others infinitely more cerebral and foreboding, but in any case, always intoxicating.
“Throughout all of my years as a musician, it’s very rare for me to return to a record I have participated in myself for the sheer listening pleasure alone,” notes Mikael. “STORM CORROSION is the exception. It’s such a lovely record to me. I can distance myself from my own work on it and just experience it as a fan of its music. Everything about this record is strange in the best way possible.”
“We’d talked many times over the years about doing a project with just the two of us,” continues Steven. “In 2011 we quietly got together for a week at my studio, and started to make music, not knowing where it would take us, but knowing that the last thing we wanted to do was the obvious. Instead, we found ourselves making an album of weird psychedelic chamber folk music, almost child-like in places, with lots of dissonance, orchestral arrangements and weird bits.”
“Storm Corrosion” will be available on the following formats:
* Orange & Purple vinyl 2LP, gatefold packaging, 8-page booklet (includes bonus track live recording of “Drag Ropes” from Royal Albert Hall in 2015)
* Yellow vinyl 2LP, gatefold packaging, 8-page booklet (includes bonus track live recording of “Drag Ropes” from Royal Albert Hall in 2015)
* Black vinyl 2LP, gatefold packaging, 8-page booklet (includes bonus track live recording of “Drag Ropes” from Royal Albert Hall in 2015)
* Blu-ray edition (includes high-resolution stereo, 2024 Dolby Atmos and 5.1 DTS-HD surround audio mixes and instrumental mixes of each track. Also includes a mini album documentary, the promo video for the track “Drag Ropes”, alongside two demo versions and an 8-page printed booklet. Additionally, a 2015 live recording of “Drag Ropes” from The Royal Albert Hall when Mikael guested at one of Steven’s solo concerts has been newly mixed for this edition)
* CD edition (digipak CD edition includes 8-page printed booklet, plus a bonus track the live recording of “Drag Ropes” from The Royal Albert Hall in 2015)
Its impact was keenly felt the world over — so much so, that there have been on-going calls for a follow-up. It’s something both musicians are open to but given how busy they are in their main projects, Steven as a solo artist and Mikael in charge of all things OPETH, whether it happens anytime soon remains to be seen. And if the members of STORM CORROSION do end up working on new material, chances are it will be done behind closed doors, in a similar spirit to their brilliantly leftfield debut.
“I get the notion that some listeners are completely and utterly in love with it,” continues Mikael. “I really understand that, since that’s how I feel myself. It’s strange and crazy in many ways. This record has got something. It’s quite unique. I’m so happy to see it available again.”
For Steven, who first started working with OPETH as the producer for seminal albums like “Blackwater Park”, “Deliverance” and “Damnation”, the sheer delight he takes from working with someone as utterly devoted to the surreal and obscure is something he has been continually vocal about. They are kindred spirits, and in more ways than one — this particular masterpiece demonstrating that in the most poignant of ways.
“That security in our collaboration could only have come from a place of mutual respect and admiration, even a sense of awe at what the other was capable of,” continues Steven. “We loved the finished result. It had seemed so effortless to make it.”
Once it was unveiled to the world, STORM CORROSION created just as much excitement as it did confusion. And as anyone familiar with either of these musicians will know, that’s precisely what they were aiming for.
“I don’t know what the people expecting a full-on heavy rock album made of it,” laughs Steven. “In many ways it has become the cult classic we always intended it to be…”
Issued in 2012, “Storm Corrosion” sold 9,400 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 47 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD also landed at No. 45 on the official U.K. chart.
In a 2019 question-and-answer session posted on the YouTube channel of Nuclear Blast Records, Åkerfeldt was asked about the possibility of a second album from STORM CORROSION. He said at the time: “I had dinner with Steve yesterday, and we talked a little bit about it. We always talk a little bit about it, if we’re gonna do another one. But yeah, I think we’ll try; at some point, we’ll try. I can almost say a hundred percent that we will try, without really knowing — but just judging from how we talk about this project. That was a fun thing for both of us and a new thing for both of us. But the problem, when you have one record, is that there’s a reference point. So it’s likely that if we do another record, maybe there’ll be another name for that project. And it’s likely it will sound completely different.
“We wanna make another record, (and) if we do that, it has to be on the same premise as how we did the first one,” he continued. “Nobody knows. There’s no record label that knows. We don’t even know if it’s gonna work out and we don’t know what we’re doing, basically. I mean, that was almost written in real time and recorded in real time. We just had a riff. ‘Okay, let’s record that riff, that part, and then piece it together.’ And then, in the end, it was, like, ‘My God, this is strange. But we love it. What is it?’
“We had some common inspirations and common artists and bands that we said, ‘Maybe around there, that’s where we meet up and do something,'” Mikael added. “And it ended up sounding like nothing I can compare it to, to be honest. For good and worse, for fans. It’s a weird record. And it sold a lot in the first couple of weeks, because Roadrunner picked that up. And I assume it sold a lot to fans of PORCUPINE TREE and Steven Wilson fans, who must have gone, ‘What the hell is this?’
“I love that album — love it. But, yeah, we’re gonna do something, I’m sure. But it’s probably gonna be different.”
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