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DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT — Innern (Instrumental)

DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT

Innern (Instrumental) (2026)

Label: Season Of Mist
★★★★½ 9/10
By Scorpio

Track Listing

  1. Marter (Instrumental)
  2. Xibalba (Instrumental)
  3. Eos (Instrumental)
  4. Fragment (Instrumental)
  5. Finisterre III (Instrumental)
  6. Forlorn (Instrumental)

DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT put out Innern in September 2025, their sixth album and the first with Alan Noruspur on bass. A year later the record comes back with the singing gone. The running order is untouched and the whole thing lasts 43:09 against the original's 43:12. Nothing was rearranged or re-recorded, and every change happened at the mixing desk. Noruspur first worked with the band as a touring guitarist, then learned bass in order to make this album. The instrumental edition was his idea.

"Xibalba" is the longest piece here at 10:07. It was written early and it was the last song on the album to receive lyrics, so Noruspur spent months with the instrumental before he heard it sung. When the vocal take arrived he was, in his own words, "a bit disappointed even at first". He told The MetalList he went to the rest of the band and said: "Hey, I think we need to release this song in its instrumental version as well. If we're not doing it for the fans, at least do this for me, because it sounds so different." The sung version is now his favourite track on the record.

Kamprad built the new mix himself. "When I started working on the new mix for the instrumental album, I realized, and I really also appreciated, all the little details which were there in the music," he told us. "They are always there, also on the vocal album, but they are buried beneath the vocals." One element across the whole release is new. On "Fragment" he added a synth that imitates the long scream it replaces. Everywhere else he picked two or three things per song and pushed them forward. He also reset the EQ on the bass and on Tobias Schuler's tom fills, which had been sitting under everything else.

The synth on "Fragment" is subtle enough that you would not catch it without being told. That restraint runs through the release. Both versions of Innern work, and this one never sounds like a smaller edition of something bigger. Noruspur described a side effect that is hard to shake once you know about it. "With the vocals gone, your brain is so used to it that you hallucinate some of the words and some of the sentences. You feel like he missed the part, but if you listen closely, there is no vocal. You just imagine it."

Innern took its lyrics from the diary of an anonymous prisoner, handed to Kamprad by his father. Kamprad has said the man "describes how he felt in captivity in a way I could relate to". Take the words away and the music still carries the weight. "Finisterre III" sits fifth, two minutes of solo piano. It was already wordless before any of this began, the third entry in a sequence that started on Finisterre in 2017 and carried on through Noktvrn in 2021.

This rewards anyone who has lived with Innern for a year and wants to hear what sits underneath it. It also works on its own terms, which is the harder test. Do not expect any of it on stage. "Just playing an instrumental song just for the sake of not singing doesn't really make sense in a live show," Kamprad says. "It's just for the personal listening experience." The band starts a sixteen-date European run with CONJURER in October, playing the sung versions. This edition is digital only.

Our full interview with Nikita Kamprad and Alan Noruspur is coming shortly.

"Xibalba" (Instrumental)

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Promo provided by Season of Mist.