Promo2 | Astral Sleep

ASTRAL SLEEP presents:
We Are Already Living In The End Of Times
(Out on 21.4.2023 via Saarni Records)

With the previous album Astral Doom Musick (Saarni Records 2020), Astral Sleep established their accurate genre definition as the namesake of the said album. With the new, 4th full-length, the band continues to evolve within these musical terms, but this time with a direction towards more Doom and Gloom, less Astral and Magical. The new album’s gargantuan soundscape resonates the immensity of the apocalypse portrayed. Beneath the waves of crushing guitars, drums pound and bass churns, like volcanoes that erupt under oceans, and above glide the ethereal lead guitars and synths, as the powerful vocals shatter the skies and tremble the earth.

We Are Already Living In The End Of Times witnesses the apocalypse as it manifests, and explores the thoughts, feelings, and insights that spring/unfold in the face of the Doom. Why did this happen? What can we do about it? How should we feel about it? Should we care? Does it even matter? The album takes it path through powerful scenes of destruction, loss, and despair, but also of retribution, self-realization, and existential enlightenment.

The cover art for the album was made by the renowned artist Mark Cooper, an insanely talented designer of tons of album-covers. This epic piece depicts an apocalyptic event where the last concert ever to happen on earth is about to take place running on the last fumes of the broken-down factory.

The album contains six songs:

We Are Already Living In The End Of Times

Torment In Existence

Invisible Flesh

The Legacies

Time Is

Status Of The Soul

(Total album runtime 46:27)

Release schedule:

17. February 2023 the first single from the album releases on all streaming services. Album pre-order becomes available.

21. April 2023 the full album releases and is available for purchase in digital, CD, and vinyl formats. The second single is released in streaming services on the same date.

The remaining four songs from the album are each independently released in the streaming services on monthly basis, until the sixth song releases in August 2023.

The first track, the title song We Are Already Living In The End Of Times witnesses the ending of the world and explores the concept of afterlife in Heaven and Hell through the eyes of a prophet who had predicted the doom long ago. The song is soaked in noise and distort, resonating the chaotic rumble of the end of times.

After the release of the beast, Time Is, to contemplate the new insights considering the essence of our physical being, and the manifestation of our spirit through the temporal dimension. The unending serpent that is the eternity begins to uncoil, and paves the way for the ultimate enlightenment...

Astral Sleep: Biography

Astral Sleep is an Experimental Doom Metal band from Finland, Tellus. The group has wreaked havoc on the metal genre since 2005. Astral Doom Musick is the band’s sixth and most recent release.

Astral Sleep was founded in 2004 in Tampere, Finland by Markus Heinonen (e.g. Satan’s Fall, Night of Suicide, Kausalgia, Stone Ship) in vocals and guitar, Jaakko Oksanen (e.g. Valoton, Vesperith, Sightless) in bass and Rolle Heinonen in lead guitar. Later on, the band recruited Jiri Pyörälä as drummer (2008) and Aaro Haverinen as guitarist (2019).

Over the course of its production, the band has become acknowledged for a cross-disciplinary approach that aims at narrating variable states of mind and spirit—worlds where the verges of dreams and madness intersect with those of astral dimensions. Accordingly, musical building blocks blend together into monstrous chimeras dictated by the narrative.