Biography

Witherscape is a Swedish progressive death metal project founded by producer/multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Dan Swanö and guitarist/bassist Ragnar Widerberg. Swanö has played founding or foundational roles in Edge of Sanity, Nightingale, Demiurg, and Bloodbath from the 1980s to the early aughts. He has also produced and/or engineered hundreds of records for bands ranging from Opeth and Katatonia to Dissection and Therion; he's guested and collaborated on even more. During a hiatus, he encountered Widerberg (a member of Shadowquest) in a Swedish music store. In conversation, the pair discovered they had much in common. Their numerous discussions of bands and classic metal recordings brought them to the conclusion that a musical collaboration was a logical next step. They began working on a debut album at Swanö's legendary Unisound Studio and completed The Inheritance -- with a story and lyrics written by Paul Kuhr of Novembers Doom. It was released by Century Media a year later and greeted by universal acclaim from metal, progressive, and extreme music fans. Understanding all too well the fickle nature of the 21st century music business, the band digitally issued the stop-gap EP The New Tomorrow in 2014. It consisted of a (new) title track, revisionings of two songs from the first album, three covers, and various mixes, ten cuts in all. Over the next year-and-a-half, the pair worked on a new full-length conceptual set that would pick up where the song "The New Tomorrow" left off. Re-enlisting Kuhr as lyricist, the band recorded The Northern Sanctuary at Unisound; its music blended elements of classic prog and hard rock with atmospherically enhanced extreme metal. The album was issued in the summer of 2016. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi