Karvel

Listening to Karvel makes you feel like there's sand between your teeth. Don't worry, that's by design. The music scrapes, screeches, but also soothes: raw alternative rock rooted in grunge and stoner, where heavy riffs sit next to swinging ballads and the backing vocals are sometimes dissonant without ever losing the melody. Too soft for metal, too hard for rock, loved by metal heads and mothers-in-law alike.

Karvel started in the Netherlands in 2019, when guitarist Pelle Kuipers and drummer Yoeran Luteijn found that their simple jams kept turning into full songs. Over five years and a few lineups, the band played around 36 shows, reached the national finals of the Wacken Open Air Metal Battle and was selected for the finals of the Grote Prijs van Rotterdam in 2022. During this time they also played abroad in Brighton (UK) and Oldenburg (GER).

When Yoeran moved to Norway in 2024, Pelle tried keeping Karvel alive with other musicians. One night at the Kulturpub in Fagernes however brought the two of them back on stage and it was obvious the songs had never left their bodies. The crowd agreed and two invitations followed: a return to the Kulturpub during the Rakfisk festival, and a spot at Fredsfestivalen in the summer of 2027.

Karvel runs on dynamics. A silence before the storm makes the heavy parts hit harder than any band playing flat out all night, and the two of them are locked in tightly enough to start a song on a single breath. The band plays both a full amplified show and an acoustic duo set: guitar and lead vocals, with drum parts translated to cajon and shaker, and harmonies on top.

Playing together, they've also decided to release new recordings. The first one is "Nothing To Die For," a single recorded in 2022 and finally getting its mix, which will be out at the end of 2026. It will be released with a VR music video that you can explore in an interactive web app or watch as a 360° video on YouTube. At the start of 2027 their EP recorded in Brighton will be released containing four songs: Reach For The Sun, A Beautiful Mistake, Insidious and Rubicon.