SVALBARD announce new album The Weight Of The Mask

Svalbard are proud to announce their ardently anticipated new studio album, The Weight Of The Mask, due out on October 6th via Nuclear Blast Records. White-hot new single ‚Faking It‚ has also been revealed, accompanied by a video. The track lays bare a poignant, candid account of dealing with depression and coming to the realisation that you are „faking it“ to just get by.

Svalbard’s intention with their music is to make people feel less alone, and to be there for people in their darkest times. The Weight Of The Mask bravely lays out experiences of mental illness and depression, hoping to help destigmatise these topics.

Svalbard’s Serena Cherry stated, „If the previous record was about facing your demons, then The Weight of The Mask is about fighting them with everything you’ve got. You can literally hear the depression transform into aggression in these songs. The Weight of The Mask was admittedly a challenging album to make because we cut so deep this time around, it was a painful but ultimately cathartic process. This album is the sound of two years worth of internal darkness boiling away inside and then finally being unleashed.

Faking It is a song about feeling deprived of meaningful human connection due to depression acting like a wall that shuts you off from others. It addresses the ways in which those who suffer with depression can feel guilted into putting on a happy mask. The lyrics are a reflection on happiness as a social obligation and how scarily good you can become at deceiving everyone around you into thinking that you’re fine when you’re not. With Faking It, we are both acknowledging the pressure for forced positivity, the fear that people won’t like you if you’re sad and also questioning where the root of this intolerance towards depression lies.“ 

Serena added about the ‚Faking It‚ video, „This video leans on deliberately obvious binary oppositions to hammer home the message of the song. We have the glossy smiling shots, filmed in the fakest place we could find: The Selfie Factory; mixed with dark, expressive performance footage that represents the internal struggle within.“