Paradise Lost guitarist Greg Mackintosh ended Vallenfyre in 2018 after eight years and three full-length albums. Mackintosh has since teamed up Vallenfyre live bassist Chris Casket (ex-Extreme Noise Terror, Devilment) for a brand new band called Strigoi, which is named after the troubled spirits in Romanian mythology who could rise from the grave and assume an entirely different form.
Strigoi is rounded out by Paradise Lost drummer Waltteri Väyrynen in the studio, though he's not a full-time member of the band and will not be performing live. Strigoi recently recorded their 12-song debut album Abandon All Faith with Väyrynen at his Black Planet studio. Nuclear Blast describes the debut album as "old-school death metal, grindcore and punk for a visceral, but cinematic offering of extreme metal."
Here's what Mackintosh had to say.
“With Vallenfyre, we went down this path where it got more and more crusty. I thought we couldn’t take it any further, so I needed to put in some new elements. With Strigoi, there’s a bit of spookiness, even some subtle elements of industrial and even black metal. The goal was to switch it up a bit. I was perfectly content with what I was doing in Vallenfyre, but for Strigoi to stand on its own, I wanted to try new things to separate ourselves from the pack.”
Stay tuned for release info soon.
