Indeed, the album sounds confident and meticulously arranged, afforded by the band’s isolation. “The songs benefitted from the relaxed environment of being away from everything,” Olsson explains. The recording process for Abyssal Trip differs from previous releases in that the band - guitarist Robert Sörling, drummer Jonatan Rimsbo and Olsson - opted to capture the performances while holed up in the mental bathysphere of a house in the countryside near Stockholm. “The concept of something undiscovered out there in vast emptiness is pretty much always present.”

“The lyrical themes we address, like the ultimate doom of man, and the search and longing for new and better worlds, are still there,” Olsson says. Likewise, the lyrics take a poetic approach to establishing the sonic scenery. The songs take their time to unfurl, making them even more hypnotic. The 6-song, 44-minute album fittingly embodies that bleak realm with rumbling, oozing guitars intercut with dramatic melodic interludes. Following a 5-year break between their previous album, Ancient of Days - perhaps fittingly spent pondering said vastness - Spelljammer is back with an album that perfectly bridges the band’s earlier desert rock leanings and their later massive, slow-burning riffs.Ībyssal Trip (note: carefully re-read that album title) takes its moniker from the perpetually dark, cold, oxygen-free zone at the bottom of the ocean.

And it certainly shows in both the expansive, sludgy sounds and contemplative lyrics of the Stockholm, Sweden based trio. “The vastness of everything is something that I think about a lot,” says Spelljammer bassist/vocalist Niklas Olsson.

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