HUNDRED HEADLESS HORSEMEN is a psychedelic death metal band hailing from Helsinki, Finland. Their first full-length, concept album titled “Apokalepsia” was released through Inverse Records on 21 May 2021.
The band blends together different subgenres of metal from current and past time frames to create their own unique brand of psychedelic death metal. Their musical approach mirrors the background narrative of the album that moves in multiple time and space dimensions based on fragments of scientific articles found about a formerly unknown psychoneurological condition: Apokalepsia.
Apokalepsia is a group of symptoms characterized by recurrent seizures. These episodes can vary from brief and nearly undetectable interludes to long periods of vigorous shaking, hyperventilation, suffocating despair and a failure to function in a world defined by its imminent devastation. Many victims also describe vivid visual and auditory hallucinations during apokaleptic seizures. The journal entries of these formerly unknown cases tell much about the inner struggles of the victims:
“The momentum that upholds life comes from death, darkness and decay. No matter how delusional we become, our efforts will never be grand enough to transcend this circular motion. In stark contrast to nature, the economy was always a fiction. A fiction that nevertheless had very real consequences to our lives, which have led us to the profound misinterpretation of its true form. The system we had built long ago is now eating us alive.”
“Many of us had bright ideas, but in the end, our egos were always standing between the ideas and actually living them. Were we ever able to remind ourselves that the whole spectrum of life upon this earth was just as precious as our own? Or did we merely fall back to building fortresses against our own fears?”
Apokalepsia was composed, performed, produced by Hundred Headless Horsemen. The band remains anonymous, but was joined by Mikko Suikkanen on electric violin and Saergu on synthesizers in “The Road”, as well as Titus on percussion on “The Road” and “Spleen”. The album was recorded by Valtteri Virolainen and Titus, mixed by Valtteri Virolainen and mastered by Magnus Lindberg Productions. Photographer and visual artist Karl Ketamo worked with us to create a visual form for our concept.