Virginia metallers, While Heaven Wept, are commemorating their 25th year with the release of their sixth full length album, Suspended At Aphelion, via Nuclear Blast this October.

In the fourth album trailer,  vocalist Rain Irving and guitarist Tom Phillips give a recap of the recording sessions.

Heaven Wept mainman Tom Philips: “We've always pushed ourselves with every recording that we've done - to capture better performances, higher fidelity, greater clarity in sound and expression; sometimes this tests the resolve of everyone involved - some aspects are brutally painful or tedious... and there's no avoiding this - however, on another hand Suspended At Aphelion was a very easy album to realize on account of us heeding the music itself, being quite prepared, and an efficient studio experience due in no small part to Kevin 131. The mission was to deliver a dynamic, expressive, natural/organic album, and I believe we have succeeded in doing just that.”

Three previous trailers follow:

Trailer #1:

Trailer #2:

Trailer #3:

Suspended At Aphelion is a single track divided into 11 parts, performed by the entire Fear Of Infinity line-up as well as several esteemed guests, including Fates Warning alumni drummer Mark Zonder and co-founding guitarist Victor Arduini - uniting two eras of Fates Warning for the first time ever.

Tom Phillips offers more insight into the album: "While most of our albums have been thematic, this is the first time we've released something entirely of a conceptual nature in the grand tradition of Pink Floyd, Genesis, Rush, Marillion, Iron Maiden, King Diamond, Queensrÿche and of course Fates Warning...and musically, this album falls somewhere in the middle of all of that with a touch of Viking-era BATHORY as well."

The signature sound of While Heaven Wept remains fully intact, yet has evolved; Phillips explains: "We've always been characterized by emotional sincerity, bombast, sweeping melodies, and dense orchestration, and »Suspended At Aphelion« is no exception - however, this really is another level for us in that it's the first album featuring all-new material composed in this decade (as opposed to previous releases which often culled from years of archival material), it's full of twists, turns, modulations, time changes, harmonic content rarely heard in metal, and tons of counterpoint. This is all augmented by actual cellos, violins, classical guitars, an array of percussion, and genuine analog synths."

"Over the last few years, we've had some audiophiles reaching out to us regarding the "loudness wars", so we were very much committed to delivering an album with a wide dynamic range, with very little peak reduction or compression...insuring it was as dynamic and organic as possible versus being Pro-Tooled to death or overtly compressed/limited for loudness...not unlike our labelmates Satyricon, who definitely impacted our approach to »Suspended At Aphelion«...so you may have to turn it up compared to X album from 2014, but we feel like this epic journey is even more gratifying because of this."

 

 

Suspended At Aphelion tracklisting:

"I: Introspectus"
"II: Icarus And I"
"III: Ardor"
"IV: Heartburst"
"V: Indifference Turned Paralysis "
"VI: The Memory Of Bleeding"
"VII: Souls In Permafrost"
"VIII: Searching The Stars"
"IX: Reminiscence Of Strangers"
"X: Lifelines Lost"
"XI: Retrospectus"

"Icarus And I" lyric video:

Commented guitarist, keyboardist and vocalist Tom Philips: “"Icarus And I" is Part 2 out of 11 and establishes the foundation of Suspended At Aphelion’s plot: the pursuit of the sun with passion and vigor, only to succumb to the reality that it is beyond reach. That is really what Suspended At Aphelion is all about: being instead condemned to the furthest point from the sun...the failure to achieve the dream - despite all the faith, hope, spirit, strength, and heart any one of us could muster. And musically, there are so many more twists, turns, modulations, so much more madness that follows this, it's impossible to represent the totality of this song with any individual part, however ‘Icarus And I’was the inception of what we feel is the most gratifying journey in the history of While Heaven Wept.”

The cover art for Suspended At Aphelion was once again created by Gustavo Sazes (Morbid Angel), and three separate audio masters were optimized for LP, CD, and digital download formats.

 

 

While Heaven Wept also reunited with producer/engineer Kevin "131" Gutierrez (Raven, Deceased, Dysrhythmia) at Assembly Line Studios for the recording of Suspended At Aphelion, 12 years after creating their classic Of Empires Forlorn album together, solidifying an already strong team for their most epic of epics!

Suspended At Aphelion will be released by Nuclear Blast on October 24th in Europe and on November 18th in North America via Metalville Records.