DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT Strip The Vocals From 'Innern' — The Instrumental Edition Came From A Bassist Who Missed The Version He Wrote To

DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT will release an instrumental version of "Innern", their sixth album, on September 12 via Season of Mist. It arrives digitally, exactly one year after the original, and it exists because someone in the band could not let go of how the songs sounded before the vocals went on.

The instrumental version of "Xibalba" is out today across digital platforms, streaming on the Season of Mist YouTube channel. The choice of song is not arbitrary: "Xibalba" was the first track on "Innern" whose instrumentation the band finished, and the last to receive vocals. It spent longer in purely instrumental form than anything else on the record.

That is also where the whole idea came from. "The initial idea came from our bassist, Alan," says vocalist and guitarist Nikita Kamprad. Alan Noruspur had spent months living with the instrumental "Xibalba" while the band were writing "Innern", and once the vocals arrived he found he missed it. The attachment revived a possibility the band had floated even before the album originally came out.

What they have made is not a muted version of the existing mix. Kamprad built an entirely new one, rebalancing instrument levels and adding fresh atmospheric layers in places. "The instrumental version has to carry the same atmosphere, emotion and narrative on its own," he explains. "Removing the vocals allows all of these carefully crafted details to breathe."

With the vocal layer gone, the synthesizers and ambient textures responsible for the album's cinematic scale — which Kamprad treats as compositional elements rather than decoration — move to the front, alongside the interplay between his and Nicolas Rausch's guitars, Noruspur's bass and Tobias Schuler's drums.

Kamprad frames it less as a remix than as a return. "Every song usually begins as an instrumental composition, so in many ways, this version of 'Innern' represents the songs in their original form," he says. "We don't see it as an alternative to the original album, but as another perspective on the same body of work, one that places the focus entirely on the music itself."

Listen to the instrumental "Xibalba" below.

The original "Innern" is out now on Season of Mist. Pre-save the instrumental edition and stream or order the album here.

The band's European headline tour with CONJURER and BRNJSMIN opens next month. Tickets are at derwegeinerfreiheit.de/live.

DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT European tour 2026, with CONJURER and BRNJSMIN: