Danish quartet, Konvent, return with an assured confidence on their third full length, Firesky.

KEEPING THE FIRE SMOULDERING

Four years is a long time to keep a fire smouldering, but Konvent have never been a band in a hurry. Formed in Copenhagen in 2015, the quartet spent five years shaping their sound before debut Puritan Masochism arrived via Napalm Records in January 2020 – just in time for the world to lock its doors and leave one of that year’s most promising death doom debuts with nowhere to go.

Rather than stall, they regrouped, and 2022’s Call Down The Sun proved the first record had been no fluke, deepening the atmosphere and sharpening the songwriting without sacrificing an ounce of weight. Since then, the Danes have shared stages with Zeal & Ardor and played both Wacken and Copenhell, and now comes Firesky – album number three, once again via Napalm, and the one the band themselves are calling their most ambitious yet.

Konvent have always carried a blackened edge – the blackened death doom tag was already being attached to them by the time Call Down The Sun arrived – but this time the band have leaned into black metal far more deliberately, describing it as “a genre we are all very inspired by.” Third albums are traditionally where bands either consolidate or come unstuck, and Konvent have chosen neither option, opting instead to dismantle their own blueprint and redraw it.

THE DANISH UNDERGROUND

It is worth pausing on just how strong the Danish underground has become in the time Konvent have been active. Copenhagen in particular has produced a steady stream of bands willing to push extreme music into stranger, more personal shapes, and Copenhell has grown into one of Europe’s most respected festivals, giving homegrown acts a platform their predecessors could only dream of. Konvent have long been one of the scene’s most recognisable exports, not least because an all-female death doom band remains a rarer sight than it should be in 2026.

The band have always insisted that their line-up came together by chance rather than design, but the sight of four women delivering some of the heaviest music on any festival bill has undoubtedly inspired others to pick up instruments. On Firesky, for the first time, that identity moves from the background to the very centre of the music’s message.

The lyrical context matters every bit as much as the musical one. The band have been refreshingly blunt that the political state of the world simply could not be kept out of these songs, naming in particular the deliberate erosion of women’s and LGBTQ people’s rights and framing the whole record as a furious urge to torch the old order and build something more compassionate in its place. It is a manifesto as much as an album statement, and it lends Firesky a moral heat that sits fascinatingly at odds with doom’s traditional preoccupation with private despair. This is a record that looks outward, and it is angry about what it sees.

THE FOUNDING CORE

The line-up has evolved since Call Down The Sun. Vocalist Rikke Emilie List and bassist Heidi Withington Brink remain the band’s founding core, drummer Julie Simonsen has held the stool since stepping in for original sticksman Mette a few years into the band’s life, and the guitar position, originally filled by founding member Sara Helena Nørregaard, is now held by Amira Liv Hernan, who also contributes backing vocals.

The production team is equally worth noting Jacob Bredahl recorded and produced the album at Antfarm Studios before mixing it at Dead Rat Studios, with Brad Boatright – a name synonymous with the heavier end of the underground – handling mastering at Audiosiege. Nona Limmen provides the cover artwork, a fittingly ominous gateway to what lies within.

Sound-wise, the core of what makes Konvent so distinctive is still very much in place. List’s guttural roar remains one of the most formidable voices in modern doom, a sound so low and cavernous it seems to emerge from the floorboards rather than the stage, while Withington Brink and Simonsen lock into the kind of glacial, punishing groove that makes every beat feel like a deliberate act of violence.

What has changed is the palette surrounding that core. There is more air in these arrangements, more willingness to hold back before the hammer falls, and, crucially, a new vocal weapon: List now deploys a raw, scorching black metal scream alongside her familiar gutturals, giving the album a second register of fury that the earlier records simply did not have.

THE BLACKENED EDGE

The black metal influence deserves closer attention, because it would have been easy to bolt it on as decoration. Instead, on the evidence of the two singles, it has been woven into the very structure of the songs. Rather than simply speeding up, Konvent use black metal as a release valve: long stretches of doom-laden pressure build until something has to give, and when it does, the tremolo-tinged riffing and blasting drums arrive like a dam bursting.

It is a technique that brings to mind the way certain blackened doom outfits have long played slowness and savagery off against each other, but Konvent apply it with their own distinct sense of drama. Crucially, the heaviness never feels sacrificed in the process. If anything, those explosions make the slower passages feel heavier still, the contrast sharpening both extremes and turning each song into something closer to a narrative arc than a simple riff parade.

The early material set the tone for all of this. Puritan Masochism was a slab of pure, suffocating heaviness – tracks such as the title track, World Of Gone and Idle Hands traded in slow-motion brutality, with only occasional glimmers of the atmosphere to come. Call Down The Sun widened the lens considerably: songs like Grains, Sand Is King and Harena introduced desert-bleached imagery, hints of post-metal and even progressive flourishes, and the album as a whole showed a band growing more comfortable with space and restraint. Firesky, in that light, reads as the logical next step and a bold leap at the same time – fewer songs, far more room, and a willingness to follow ideas wherever they lead rather than cutting them short for the sake of convention.

EXORCISE

Exorcise opens the album and sets out its stall immediately. For its first stretch it sits exactly where long-term followers would hope – monolithic and oppressive, the riffs lumbering forward like something ancient waking from a long sleep – but the closing section tears loose into a far more savage, black metal-charged assault. That rupture is where List’s new scream truly announces itself, minutes of mounting pressure giving way to a torrent of raw-throated rage.

The band have described the track as “the sound of the suffocation we feel” watching lawmakers pass increasingly sexist and transphobic legislation, likening those laws to a serpent that will eventually devour its own tail. Heard with that in mind, the slow strangulation of the opening minutes and the violent release that follows make perfect, furious sense.

BUILT ON WEIGHT

Scorning follows, and it looks set to be the album’s most patient exercise in tension. By the label’s account, it opens on a much softer footing, with restrained percussion and clean-toned guitar before List’s lower register takes hold, and it gradually widens in range from there.

For a band built on weight, opening a song on near fragility is a telling choice, and I would expect the contrast to make the inevitable heaviness land all the harder when it arrives. It is the kind of track where the surface stays deceptively calm while the dread accumulates quietly underneath – and if it follows the pattern established by its predecessor, the release will be worth the wait.

IN THE UNKNOWN

In The Unknown is the album’s centrepiece and its longest song, sitting at around twelve minutes, and its placement suggests a deliberate plunge back into the murk after the comparative restraint of Scorning. On paper, it is the track that most fully embodies the band’s new progressive ambitions, the kind of shifting, multi-sectioned piece that would have been unthinkable on Puritan Masochism. Twelve minutes is a serious commitment in any genre, let alone one built on slow tempos, and it is here that Konvent’s growth as songwriters will face its sternest test.

Done right, it should be the album’s emotional and structural heart; the title alone suggests a journey without a map, which feels entirely in keeping with a band deliberately abandoning the safety of their own comfort zone. Placed third in a five-track running order, it also acts as the album’s hinge: everything before it builds towards this descent, and everything after it climbs back towards the light. If Konvent can sustain tension across that kind of length – shifting tempos, layering textures and letting List move between her two vocal registers – In The Unknown could well become the track that long-time fans point to when they explain how far this band has come since 2020.

FIRESKY

Title track Firesky is the boldest moment of the lot and arguably the album’s defining statement. It features a guest appearance from Mai Soon Young Ovlisen of Meejah, and it is the song where Konvent’s two sides – the old suffocating darkness and the newfound light – collide most strikingly. The cleaner sections arrive like a break in a storm cloud, a burst of colour against the grey, the contrast giving the track a sense of scale and drama that feels genuinely new for the band. Lyrically, they describe it as “a celebration of female and queer communities lifting each other up,” a rallying cry for mutual support and for tearing down the forces that threaten those communities. The accompanying video, directed by Jon Gotlev, matches that defiant spirit, and as a calling card for the album’s themes it could hardly be more fitting.

Postludium brings things to a close. A wordless epilogue with no break from the song before it, it functions less as a separate song than as the dying embers of Firesky itself – the smoke drifting after the blaze. The name, a nod to the closing voluntary played at the end of a church service, carries a quietly pointed irony on a record so concerned with burning down old structures. After the intensity of everything that precedes it, a wordless coda feels like the right choice, leaving the listener to sit with what they have heard rather than hammering one final point home.

GREAT MOVEMENTS

Firesky is essentially built in four great movements, each with its own character: the slow strangulation and eruption of Exorcise, the deceptive fragility of Scorning, the long dark odyssey of In The Unknown, and the defiant blaze of the title track. It is an album designed to be heard in one sitting, from start to finish.

What Firesky does best is evolve Konvent’s identity without diluting it. The heaviness that made Puritan Masochism such a jolt is still here in abundance, but it is now framed by a much wider emotional and stylistic range – the black metal ferocity, the clean passages, the patient build-ups and the sudden eruptions all serving a record that feels conceived as a single, unified journey rather than a collection of songs.

It also helps that Konvent have something genuinely urgent to say. Doom has long been the natural home of personal grief and existential gloom, and there is nothing wrong with that, but Firesky channels its weight towards something more pointed and more collective. Four women from Copenhagen writing furious, crushing music about the erosion of rights for women and queer people is not a gimmick; it is the beating heart of the record, and it gives every slow, grinding riff a purpose beyond atmosphere. The anger feels earned, and the occasional shafts of light – most notably on the title track – feel all the more meaningful for it.

ASSURED CONFIDENCE

It is also a far more confident record than its predecessors in terms of pacing. Where Puritan Masochism occasionally felt like it was proving a point – heavier, slower, lower than everyone else – Firesky carries itself with the assurance of a band who no longer need to prove anything. The longer song lengths are not padding but space, and the band clearly trust their listeners to follow them through it.

That trust is a significant step. Plenty of extreme bands hit their third album and either retreat into a safer version of their debut or overreach and lose what made them special; Konvent seem to have found the narrow path between those two traps, expanding their sound in every direction while keeping the core of crushing weight that drew people to them in the first place. That balance, more than any single riff or scream, may prove to be the album’s greatest achievement.

OUTGROWING THE BOX

That is not to say the record is without risk. Five tracks averaging around ten minutes apiece demand real commitment, and in doom the line between hypnotic and overlong can be a fine one; whether every minute of In The Unknown earns its place is the most obvious test. Long-time fans who fell for the relentless, unbroken heaviness of the debut may also need a moment to adjust to the black metal shrieks and clean passages, even if the evolution feels natural in context. And with just five songs, the margin for error is slim – there is nowhere for a weaker moment to hide.

Firesky is the sound of a band outgrowing the box they were placed in. A third album that opens with a slow-burning detonation, gambles on twelve-minute progressive epics and closes on a wordless coda is not the work of a band playing it safe. Whether it proves to be their finest hour will become clear once the whole thing is out in the world, but for now, the sky is burning, the old structures are crumbling, and Konvent are standing in the smoke with fists raised – and they have rarely sounded more vital.

Konvent: Facebook

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