Domkraft – Night Songs
Magnetic Eye Records – 2026
Rock, Psych, Doom, Stoner
Rated: ****
Love live Domkraft! And Long live Whiskers! May you always find your way back home… Sorry, only a handful of you lucky few readers might get that little joke. Although, maybe it’s a universal thing? I don’t know. What do I know? What I do know, is that the new Domkraft album is once again doing everything you wants it to do. And it will surely make you feel at home in their very own sound! It’s called Night Songs, and will be out November 20th on Magnetic Eye Records.
Domkraft have of course never needed to prove anything. The re-release of their 2025 self-titled debut for the ten year anniversary was a welcome one but everyone already knew. Everyone has been in tune with the three Swedes for quite some time now. For they have delivering one crushing, fuzzed-out, psychedelic doom record after another. Each release adding yet another dimension to their already impressive sound. That sonically dense and incredibly booming sound.
And after those enormous sonic adventures called Seeds and Sonic Moons we now find ourselves arriving and being whisked away immediately, by their fifth full-length called Night Songs. This time around however, there is something different in the air and it’s completely tangible. Because sometimes, as we all know, life throws things at you that are far heavier than any riff could ever be. And in this case, the personal struggles surrounding this record have clearly left a mark.
Facing a darkness that’s goes well beyond all the doom you can envision, Guitarist Martin Widholm faced a serious medical ordeal. It brought Widholm and his comrades in the band face to face with mortality. And perhaps that’s the tangible dread that seems to linger in the still cosmically dense power music on Night Songs. It might even be where it derives it’s strength. By turning that darkness, dread and shadow into something powerful, beautiful and utterly absorbing.
Domkraft remain very much Domkraft on Night Songs. The enormous wave of fuzz, the hypnotic repetitions, the crushing bass lines and the almost smothering psychedelic atmosphere are all still there, alive and pushing. But on some level, Night Songs does feel more introspective, more evocative, yet also more nebulous than before. Seven songs. Seven compositions that seem to breathe differently, allowing more space for atmosphere and emotion to creep into those familiar Domkraft sonic landscapes. The heaviness is still monumental but seems less about pummeling the listener into submission. It’s something a bit more vulnerable that seems to flow underneath all that distortion. It adds something extra.
Recorded once again at Studio Gröndahl in Stockholm by David Castillo and mixed and mastered by Karl Daniel Lidén, this new step in the Domkraft evolution still feels entirely like Domkraft. Which you probably already heard with their first single, Eclipse (Outlast the Night). A slightly airier, more melancholic side of the band, without sacrificing any of that characteristic heft. Opener Unnamed opens the other way around, a sonic explosion first, and then a new chugging march towards that tiny sliver of light shining through the windows. A song that immediately proves Domkraft have taken everything that made them such a formidable force in psychedelic doom, allowed their personal experiences to seep in, and turned it into something that feels both familiar and a surprise. Simply brilliant, and so are the other six songs. Night Songs might have been born out of some very dark circumstances, but what emerges from it is another magnificent piece of psychedelic heaviness, one that keeps pulling you deeper with every spin, like a sonically dense whirlpool…
(Written by JK)
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Magnetic Eye Records
Number 3 on the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2023
Domkraft – Sonic Moons
Number 1 on the Stoner HiVe Top 20 Countdown of 2021
