VOLA Release Single and Video "24 Lights-Years" From Upcoming Album "Witness"

The genre-welding Danish-Swedish quartet VOLA will return with their brand-new album, “Witness”, on 21 May, released on Mascot Records. Ahead of this they have revealed the official video for “24 Lights-Years,” which can be seen below.

The animated video was created by Nicolai Mogensen and Anne Nørkjær Bang. Mogensen shares, “We are very excited to share the music video for ’24 Light-Years’. This song is one of my favorites from the forthcoming album, and it has been such a joy working on the track from a visual perspective. Anne and I have been making videos together for a while. We like to try out new techniques and explore different styles of drawing and animation. For this one, we went for a more digital, spacy, and fluent look and vibe. Anne has made the drawings for the video while I worked with the animation. We still consider ourselves novices in this field, but we put a lot of time and love into this little piece of work. We really hope that you enjoy it!”

“Witness” comes nearly three years after the release of ‘Applause of a Distant Crowd,’ which saw the band go deep into the rabbit-hole, exploring society’s distractions from thoughtfulness and examined the way human relationships have evolved. Their new album goes a step further, shining a light on the subject of failed relationships, on a societal scale—the friction between leaders and followers, which is caused by the misuse of power.

“If I zoom in,” guitarist-singer Asger Mygind says. “The failure is born from unrequited love, grief, manipulative behavior and insecurity. Connecting it with the album title, one could view the characters portrayed in the lyrics as being witnesses to the dissolution of the bond they have created with people in their lives.”

VOLA wrote the songs after they returned from their successful 2019 headline tour across Europe. The tour had a string of sold-out shows along the way. It capped off an incredible two years, which had seen them also tour with Dream Theater, Anathema, Katatonia, Haken, Monuments, as well as show-stealing performances at Euroblast, Ramblin’ Man Fair, Radar Festival, Bloodstock, Damnation Fest, Tech Fest and more.

The album’s themes are entwined into both the cover art and the title as Mygind elaborates; “The cover art of the album largely inspired the title. To me, the image could either portray the close-up of an eye, or a zoomed-out image of something burning. In case of the eye, I imagine that it belongs to someone witnessing an event. Something huge and life changing. In case of burning, it is the viewer of the cover art who becomes the witness. Or maybe this burning is what the eye is looking at. No matter how I look at it, the concept of being a witness seems very present in the artwork.”