About

Seven Impale was started in the fall of 2009 by Stian Økland. Stian wanted to create a new and exciting sound combining his love for jazz guitar, thrash metal and everything in between. Tormod, Benjamin and Fredrik was part of some of these first line-ups while the band changed form rapidly, coming into its own during the first year. Håkon and Erlend joined the band in the following months and the current members has formed Seven Impale as we know it since the summer of 2010.

What became the Beginning/Relieve EP was written and partly recorded in this period, while the band practiced often and performed as much live as possible. From a small “battle of the bands”-like competition in Åsane in Bergen, the first festival gig and connections were made where Seven Impale won and got the opportunity to play the wonderful Utkant festival in the beautiful surroundings of Gulen. These connections and a bit of luck led to an open spot at the local music industry conference Blest, where we got the chance to perform in front of, among others, Ivar Peersen from Enslaved and a long haired King Crimson loving guy named Martin Kvam from Karisma Records. This was love at first sight and Martin invited us on the spot to join their roster, while Ivar put us into contact with our producer-to-be, Iver Sandøy.

While getting ready for recording City of the Sun, the band was exited to release some music and decided to finish the old material which was partly recorded earlier, and would not be part of the album anyway. Our friend, Christian Fredrik (currently the bass player in Moron Police), was excited about the music of Seven Impale and offered to help us with the production, which included re-recording everything except drums and saxophone in his apartment in Bergen. After some hundred ours of recording, production and mixing, we had the Beginning/Relieve EP ready for digital release early in 2013. Christian did all of this work for us for free and is a true hero in the mythos of the Seven Impale extended universe.

In the fall of 2013, the gang went into Solslottet studio with Iver and recorded City of the Sun, more or less exactly like it was rehearsed but with additional insane layers of synths, percussions and the trusted Roland Space Echo. The album was released in September 2014 and was received very warmly by the international prog audience. Fast forward to late summer/early fall 2015, we had already gotten impatient and again went into Iver’s studio to record Contrapasso. We had a lot of musical material from the previous two years but it was not nearly as refined as our previous album, and this proved to be quite an entertaining challenge. In that sense, Contrapasso is even more a product of the collaboration of Seven Impale and Iver Sandøy, the crazy ideas, tapestry of heavy riffs and insane soundscapes, and we couldn’t be more proud of the result.

After Contrapasso was released in September 2016 we went on to play some of our biggest and most important concerts. In 2017 we played the renowned local jazz festival in Bergen, Nattjazz. This had been a dream of ours for a long time and we are very attached to the festival both as volunteers, audience and now finally, as artists. A few months later, we travelled to Germany and played the Night of the Prog festival in the beautiful amphitheater at Lorelei, a legendary venue for prog rock.

Going forward from the summer of 2017, a lot has happened in our lives outside of Seven Impale which has made things slow down a bit. Activities with other bands, a couple of master’s degrees, health, work, family, love lives, a baby, a pandemic, the list goes on. In April 2021, Seven Impale played in Bergen again for the first time since May 2017. We played the first song that has been written for our long awaited third album. Everyone lives in Bergen again, everyone is really excited about once again gaining some momentum and showing the world how we have grown in the last five years, as human beings, as musicians, as a collective and individually. Whether the world needs more eclectic, eccentric, electric, elastic heavy jazz-rock is not certain, but it is coming your way.