THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “JIRM will make an impact on you: they have an innovative, and highly personal take on psychedelic rock and its many facets and elements. It is music with a retrospective outlook, taking the listener on adventurous excursions, deep into one’s mind. Their music aims to broaden your horizons and consciousness.
The band were formed in 2004 under the name Jeremy Irons & the Ratgang Malibus, by Micke Backendal and Karl Apelmo. In 2007, they were joined by Henke Persson and Viktor Källgren to seal the definitive lineup. The band toured extensively from Brazil to Poland, positioning themselves as one of the hardest-working and most-prolific outfits of the underground heavy rock scene. They decided to shorten their name to the acronym JIRM in 2018 when releasing their fourth full-length Surge Ex Monumentis, a record that brimmed with newfound energy.
Their fifth album The Tunnel, The Well, Holy Bedlam has been recorded in a true pandemic style: the tracks were recorded one by one, in five different studios across Sweden. It’s been a challenge both from a songwriting and technical point of view. However, the end result sounds bigger and better than ever, with no holds barred.
“The making of this album has been long and weird to say the least,” says Apelmo. “It has been a journey colored by streams of galactic beams and all that magic and stuff and has shaped this creation into a somewhat new organism. The songs have met our maker and turned back with new predictions of what lies ahead, and we are ready to draw swords on the battlefield of sound. Or if I would have to put this description in simpler words: the making of this album was interrupted by the pandemic and some of the songs were written such a long time ago that parts of the origin of the creation has fallen into oblivion. We simply can’t recall how the hell it all came around. But that doesn’t matter!
“The Tunnel, The Well, Holy Bedlam has more or less erupted from the same abyss of darkness as the last record, although it bursts up in the sky like a cool volcano with lava and stuff just like on TV. At least that’s the impression we hope you’ll get when listening. When making records in the weird way like that of this band, nothing ever turns up like we predicted, and that has evolved into some weird process that we more or less have surrendered ourselves to. So if you like or dislike any of this, we literally can’t be blamed. And the cause being, we totally lost control the minute we made our first contact with the making of sound. From that point forward we still hope it remains interesting and keeps blowing our minds. What else can you do?”
