SOV’s debut album for Despotz Records, Aklamerad Kalamitet, is the product of a pair of demented souls disenchanted by modern life and especially modern music. “It sucks!” they both scream in unison but refuse to elaborate. 

SOV’s mainman Hank von Gaia walks it like he talks it.  He takes his art so seriously that he quite literally lives in the middle of a forest.  In a cabin. With no electricity.  “Why do I need electricity?” he asks?  “I have nothing that requires it.  I have a generator so that I can play music.  I don’t have a stove because everything I eat is 100% fresh.  I steal chickens from the next town over and they’re much healthier when eaten fresh. I don’t need modern conveniences, they would only get in the way of my creativity.”

Gaia’s partner in SOV, Holmes Catacombes thinks that “Hank is completely nuts, although he’s a genius.  I live in a little town near his cabin because I need those modern conveniences.  Who in their right mind doesn’t?  I live right next to a church, although I’m not sure how long it will be there …” he trails off.

The duo met after abandoning their previous, more high profile metal bands a couple of years back when Holmes was walking through the forest in the middle of winter and stumbled upon Gaia meditating just off of the path he was walking on.  “I love the freezing cold, dark winters here,” Catacombes says. “It frees the mind and I often take my guitar and just thrash around in the snow and come up with great song ideas, although we haven’t recorded any of them yet.