Black Metal Act Gaylord has announced a new album, Crown of Joy (A Sublime Sun Thriving Amongst Suicidal Stars), that is set to release on September 30, 2021. Gaylord is best known for their debut album in 2018, The Black Metal Scene Needs To Be Destroyed. 

Gaylord frontman Richard Weeks said that “With The Black Metal Scene Needs To Be Destroyed, we used genre trappings to assault black metal with its own aural aesthetics. Raw guitars, sloppy riffs, gurgled vocals, and the bass turned way down. This time around we wanted to ‘pervert’ this ‘sacred’ music by pairing it alongside genres that most ‘true’ fans hate.” The new album sounds intense and angry, yet meshes unexpected genres from trap, R&B, jazz and hip-hop to create an unconventional sounding metal album that is anything but for the traditional. 

Weeks continued, “I basically took two months off writing metal to write an FM synth-led old school video game soundtrack and ended up listening to a lot of genres I had only kinda listened to before. I found myself listening to experimental rapper Mario Judah, Ukrainian Eurovision electro-folk act Go_A, Vtuber rapper Mori Calliope, and lots more crazy non-metal stuff. I felt inspired to try my hand at some of these genres and thus, Crown of Joy was born. Also for this album I wanted to channel my inner Arjen Lucassen.” Weeks continues: “I’ve always been a fan of Ayreon and Star One and all of Lucassen’s other projects for years. And I always try to use as many voices as I can muster when recording, but I can’t do everything, so I recruited no less than 17 guests to appear on Crown of Joy. Mostly vocalists, but some lead guitarists, and narrators as well.”

Crown of Joy (A Sublime Sun Thriving Amongst Suicidal Stars) Tracklist:
1. Lay Down
2. Ghost Me
3. Dread
4. Shit Scene, Shit Bands
5. White Night Gaslight
6. High and Mighty
7. Grey Rainbow
8. Coiled in Dust
9. Obfuscation of Intent
10. Ten Wing Angel
11. Nailed Deity
12. Again and Again
13. None/Nothing
14. Judgement and Justice
15. Slitting Their Throats
16. Kvit After School Xbox Kommando
17. Sublime Sunshine