AVKRVST was founded by Martin Utby and Simon Bergseth - two musicians and friends who grew up together and made a pact that they would form a band when they got older. Now, 22 years later, an album is ready: 49 minutes of music inspired by everything they grew up listening to - everything from Mew, Anekdoten and Porcupine Tree to Opeth, Neal Morse and King Crimson.

The Approbation is a concept album about a bleak soul who is left solely with his thoughts, isolated on a cabin deep into the dark forests, far away from civilization. The album takes the listener through the thoughts of a man struggling towards the acceptance of death, being hauled into the abyss. Sonically, ‘The Approbation’ is a massive sounding piece of music: It’s everything from lush, melancholy moods to heavy, more aggressive atmospheres. It tries to capture the feeling of a cold, gloomy fall - a dark sky, filled with gazing stars above the mist.

The whole album was written and recorded at a cabin in Alvdal (Norway) during a rainy, cold fall and winter. Throughout the album you can catch the sounds of rain and a trains horn from far away, which are actual sounds recorded outside the cabin at night under the stars. 

The artwork of The Approbation is a piece of mastermind Eliran Kantor, who has this to say about the cover: “I wanted to find the element of time passing during a period of seclusion and self-reflecting in a forest cabin, and thought about the stars above. Everything on the ground is dormant and in slumber, while right above us the universe waits for no one. It correlated nicely with a lot of the lyrics, since in them the sky elements always plays the part that is unstoppable and constantly having an effect on the person below staring up and finding himself swept by the gravity of his surroundings and how they make him reflect inwards.”

Derek Sherinian

Aurora Australis (Live 2022)