Interview by Kris Peters
THE NARRATOR were founded in 2017 in Essen, Germany and have since established themselves in the German metalcore scene with energetic songwriting and electrifying live performances. After successful tours and festival appearances, THE NARRATOR released their highly anticipated debut album, Lore, in September 2024, which has now accumulated over 11 million streams, and led to a huge EU/UK support tour with Annisokay at the end of 2025.
And that was just the beginning: On May 8, 2026, their second studio album Phosphor will be released, once again mastered by Ted Jensen (Sterling Sound – Bring Me the Horizon, Green Day, Korn, and many more). With ten songs that respond to the global crisis with inner exhaustion, Phosphor shows how close hope and self-destruction are to each other.
HEAVY sat down with frontman Fabian Jochum to find out more.
"Absolutely exciting," he smiled when we ask how he is feeling with the release date of May 8 drawing near. "Finally it's close to when the album is going to be released and I couldn't be more excited."
We ask Fabian to dive into the musical side of Phosphor and what The Narrator were going for with it.
"After our first album Lore we wanted to change our sound a little bit," he measured. "What was cool about that album was basically Tom and me wrote it, but on this one another person from Cologne that helped us write the album. Not actually writing songs, but helping us to improve and evolve our sound with more… if I call it electronic influences it maybe gets the wrong point, but there's a lot of noise stuff happening that makes the whole sound of the album more huge. The whole recording process was fun because we structured everything different from the album before because we had way less time than before. We are absolutely happy with the result. We definitely pushed the boundaries of the genre. Of course, we are a metalcore band but for us we created a sound that we like to listen to."
In the full interview, Fabian talks more about the musicality of Phosphor, how it differs to their debut Lore, the importance of changing things up despite the success of Lore and how The Narrator are better at what they do now.
We spoke about the early days of The Narrator and where they fit in, their decision to tour relentlessly before releasing an album, future plans and more.
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