Single of the Week: Major Parkinson 🇳🇴 - Viva the Apocolypse! (single)
- Andy
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
If the apocalypse really was approaching, I’ve often wondered what the correct response would be. Panic buy pasta? Drive aimlessly and check into a slightly damp end-of-days hotel in Torquay with “Sea View (Weather Permitting)” on the sign, queue politely for a final ice cream, and buy a commemorative tea towel? Or maybe, and this feels increasingly sensible, the logical option would be to head to Norway to see a Major Parkinson live show, on the basis that if the world is ending you might as well spend it with a band who seem to have been calmly rehearsing for this scenario for the last fifteen years.
Of course, it’s great to have them back with a new single ahead of the forthcoming album ’Valesa - Chapter Two, Viva The Apocolpse!’ and so early in the year whilst Mr January is still pumping away on the front of our calendars too. The title track, most recorded live is here, and it packs a quite sensational amount into just under 4 minutes. This is the band operating firmly in their natural habitat, a warped Major Parkinson style circus theme to open, grand but playful ideas, all meticulously arranged. The track moves quickly with purpose, but never in a straight line: horns, complex rhythmic twists, surging dynamics and sudden left turns combine into something that feels both carefully engineered and yet completely on the edge - recording this live certainly gives the track that added energy, and the searing, surging guitars are the most welcome sound of all.
Throughout of course, Jon Ivar Kollbotn’s vocal sits front and centre: dark, deep, and delivered with that familiar mix of drama and dryness. He sounds like a man who has known about the impending apocalypse for some time, but has chosen to watch the spectacle unfold himself from the Second Tier Balcony, where he can enjoy the events unfold with an aged whisky.
I could even make comparisons to Blackbox, simply in the same sense of scale, that same confidence in letting ideas collide, but I don’t want to over analyse, this is just hugely enjoyable musical entertainment on the highest scale, and we should all simply enjoy the moment. If this is how Major Parkinson soundtrack the end, then yes, Oslo or Bergen suddenly feels like a very sensible destination.
Release date: 23rd January 2026
Record Label: Apollon