Kvelertak – “Endling”

Over the course of five albums, the Norwegian band Kvelertak have mastered a potent mix of black metal, punk, and classic rock, resulting in tunes you’d want to blast from your car stereo on the way to a battle with an army of monsters just after unlocking your own monster-defeating superpowers. The fifth of those records, Endling, is out next week, and Kvelertak are carrying us into Labor Day by sharing its triumphant title track. The riffs are prevalant, the groove contagious, the harmonized leads transcendently Thin-Lizzy-esque. Like many Kvelertak singles, it has big “metal’s Song Of The Summer” energy.

The band’s take:

Starting with a guitar hook that could have been picked up at a First Avenue show during a US tour and culminating in a Queen-like crescendo of harmonic guitar leads, “Endling” serves as a requiem for destroyed nature and broken human destinies from our own time. Trusting silver-tongued modernity only ends in a trunk full of fury and unspent wealth drugged in a rut behind you on your certain journey across the river Gjöll.

Listen below.

Endling is out 9/8 on Prosthetic.