DJERV: More Debut Album Details Revealed

DJERV — the Norwegian band featuring singer Agnete Kjølsrud of ANIMAL ALPHA, drummer Erlend Gjerde of STONEGARD and WARDRUNA and guitarist Stian Kårstad of TRELLDOM — will release its debut album in June via Indie Recordings (except in Poland and Czech Republic, where the CD will be made available through Mystic Production). The first single, "Madman", is due on April 19.

DJERV consist of the three core members — Agnete Kjølsrud, Stian Kårstad and Erlend Gjerde. The lineup is completed by guitarist Stamos Koliousis from MENCEA and bassist Victor Brandt from ENTOMBED, who join them for their live performances.

DJERV spent most part of the fall of 2010 working on its debut album, which is set to be released in the summer of 2011. The album was engineered by Daniel Bergstrand (IN FLAMES, MESHUGGAH) in Oslo, before the band traveled to Los Angeles to team up with Grammy Award-winning producer Matt Hyde (SLAYER, HATEBREED, MONSTER MAGNET) to work on the mix. The effort was mastered by Tom Baker at Precision Mastering, and it was written and produced in its entirety by DJERV.

"Normally it takes me like 30 seconds to figure out how to mix an album, to decide what sound I'm going for, as the inspiration of the band is so obvious to spot out. But when listening to the DJERV album, I had no obvious direction on the mix as their music is truly unique. It's absolutely awesome and it's totally different from anything else I've heard in a long, long time. Working with a singer at Agnete's level is truly rewarding and something one very rarely get to do. Her control, range and performance is stunning — not to mention the great lyrics! She is definitely one of THE best singers I've had the pleasure working with, and I really hope I get to do it again."

Drummer Erlend Gjerde comments: "We tried to explore the borderlines between rock, metal and on some tracks there are more or less obvious black metal references. The overall sound is quite stripped down, groove-oriented and melodic, yet it has those cold black metal-influenced riffs accompanying the dark moods of the music . We are very happy with the way it turned out, now it's just the painful wait of hearing what everybody else thinks. Fingers crossed it go down well."

DJERV's story is short but eventful. The first demos surfaced early 2010, and two weeks later they were booked for the most important festival in Norway, the Oya festival. They went on to tour Norway in June and played several of the bigger Norwegian festivals during the summer. In August they released the "Headstone" EP which basically is their first-ever recorded demo tracks made available as people kept demanding to get to hear them not only on MySpace. The release of the "Headstone" EP generated some good press for the band several key magazines featured them as one of the bands to keep an eye out for in 2011. In addition, DIMMU BORGIR helped promote DJERV when they invited Agnete to participate on no less than three songs for their latest album, "Abrahadabra". Among them the lead track of the album, "Gateways", the video for which also features Agnete.

"Headstone" audio stream:

Check out DJERV and get a free download from the "Headstone" EP at this location.