It may be difficult to imagine heavy music with no guitars, but Toronto-based trio VÖLUR has spent the last decade doing exactly that, carving out a sound that blends doom, folk, and experimental music using violin, bass, and drums. On Breathless Spirit, their fourth and most ambitious full-length release, they are joined by producer and sound artist CARES (James Beardmore), whose deep involvement reshaped and reimagined the music into something both mythic and wholly modern.

Originally planned as an installment in VÖLUR's Die Sprachen Der Vögel collaborative series, Breathless Spirit evolved over five years into a six-track journey through dread, exile, and psychic unraveling. Its thematic framework comes from The Saga of Grettir the Strong, a 13th-century Icelandic tale of a cursed outlaw hunted to the fringes of society. VÖLUR uses the saga less as source material than as a lens, filtering its psychological darkness and sense of isolation into a cinematic and emotional album that slips between genres and traditions.

The record opens with "Hearth," a slow and meditative piece built around a falling motif inspired by Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, a gesture that recurs throughout the album in different forms. This descending interval becomes a kind of haunted breath, threading through "On Drangey," "Death in Solitude," and the title track "Breathless Spirit" itself, where it reemerges as a rising minor second. Elsewhere, songs like "Windbourne Sorcery I" and "Windbourne Sorcery II" incorporate Persian and Kurdish musical forms, using the ten-beat magham rhythm and the tanbur as foundations for contrapuntal exploration. The result is a dense, often eerie collection that draws equally from free improvisation, black metal, doom, and classical composition.

James Beardmore contributes piano, synthesizers, theremin, granular textures, and custom-built Max/MSP software, extending the acoustic performances into spectral, liminal territory. Through re-amping, ambient layering, and radical processing, he adds a dimension of fractured clarity that deepens the album’s sense of mystery. His involvement turns Breathless Spirit into something closer to sound art or ritual than a conventional metal release.

Guest musicians Amy Bowles (PONY DA LOOK) and Zoë Santo (DIVKA) lend vocals and viola respectively, expanding the tonal palette further. The album’s visual centerpiece, a stone cut print by Inuit artist Saimaiyu Akesuk, is not only used for the cover art with permission from Dorset Fine Arts, but also served as inspiration for rhythmic and structural choices in the composition of "Breathless Spirit."

The record will be released on black vinyl in two formats: a standard edition and a limited “diehard edition” that includes a 7-inch record with the bonus track "Flutterby Number" and a 20g packet of custom-blended Breathless Spirit tea. The bonus song "Glamr" also appears in digital formats, except for streaming platforms, making the physical release a more complete document. The tea, designed in collaboration with BLACK THRONE and available separately in larger quantities, mirrors the album’s meditative intensity.

VÖLUR has always defied expectations, but Breathless Spirit is their most uncompromising and immersive work yet. It is a record built on grief, tension, breath, and the spaces between, a fusion of story, sound, and silence that refuses to settle into a single identity. As Vice once wrote, "If you've never seen a crowd headbanging to a violin lead, you've never seen VÖLUR." That same spirit is alive in this album, not just in sound, but in vision.

About VÖLUR & CARES

VÖLUR is a Toronto-based experimental doom metal trio composed of Laura C. Bates (violin, vocals), Lucas Gadke (bass, vocals), and Justin Ruppel (drums). Known for their unorthodox instrumentation and boundary-pushing compositions, VÖLUR draws from a wide range of influences including doom metal, European folk, free improvisation, classical music, and Persian/Kurdish traditions. Their sound, often described as haunting and cinematic, blends thunderous low-end weight with fragile melodic tension. Since forming in 2014, they have released multiple albums and EPs, performed at festivals such as ProphecyFest and Sled Island, and collaborated with artists from around the world as part of their Die Sprachen der Vögel series.

CARES is the project of James Beardmore, a UK-born, Ontario-based musician and producer. Known for his experimental production methods and emotional sonic textures, Beardmore integrates analog synthesizers, hacked hardware, custom Max/MSP instruments, and field recordings into compositions that are as tactile as they are atmospheric. His work with VÖLUR on Breathless Spirit is a seamless collaboration that expands the band’s sonic universe, elevating their music into a richly layered fusion of organic and electronic sound.

Together, VÖLUR & CARES create immersive, mythically charged music that resists categorization, rooted in story and sound, breath and ritual.

VÖLUR is:

• Laura C. Bates – violin, electric violin, viola, cymbals, vocals
• Lucas Gadke – electric bass, double bass, harmonium, keyboards, tanbur, clarinet, bass clarinet, vocals
• Justin Ruppel – drums, percussion

Connect with VÖLUR:

Website: www.volurdoom.com
Bandcamp: https://volur.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VolurDoom/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/volurdoom/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/volurdoom
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/volurdoom
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@volurdoom
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2Y2XCmgrMhdMpoNdGibU01