After 13 years between albums, Karnivool’s In Verses arrived in a big way: a number one debut, A fanbase that never really left, and a record that felt less like a comeback than a release valve finally giving way.
If you ask vocalist Ian Kenny and guitarist Drew Goddard what it actually felt like, though, the answer isn’t triumph.
“I think relief is the main word for me,” Goddard says. “We’re stoked and we feel grateful that the people who were waiting around for so long for it seemed to enjoy it. You can’t please everyone, but we’re happy with it.”
For a band whose absence became almost as defining as their creations, finishing the album mattered more than anything that came afterwards.
The gap between Asymmetry and In Verses has been framed as patience, perfectionism, but the reality is messier… and far more human.
“It wasn’t by design,” Kenny says. “And we definitely wouldn’t advise anyone ever to do that.”
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What followed those years wasn’t silence so much as friction. Life stacking up. Momentum stalling. For Goddard, there were moments where the process stopped feeling like forward motion at all.
“There was a lot of those sorts of feelings… maybe I’ve lost the way or I’ve lost what it takes,” he says. “I can’t remember what it’s like to finish an album, to make these decisions, to get these songs in order. And it feels like I’m just spinning wheels on the spot forever.”
That doubt never quite tipped into finality, but there were stretches where the path forward disappeared completely.
“I don’t know if anyone ever thought, ‘This is it, we’re done,’” Kenny says. “It was more about not having the answers, and learning to give it space.”
Space — frustrating, necessary, and at times the only option — became the thing that kept Karnivool intact. Not by forcing progress, but by allowing it to happen when it finally could.
A friend offered up a studio for a year. Financial pressure eased just enough to focus. Health improved. And when producer Forrester Savell stepped in, the band finally had someone to help push decisions over the line.
“It only took like two weeks of just pressure cooker,” Goddard says. “Let’s all get in the room and just make the calls.”
Kenny felt the shift almost immediately. “There were so many false starts before that. But once that came together, it was like, ‘Alright… I can commit to this.’”
What emerged from that period is a record that quietly spans decades; some ideas date back years, even 20 in certain cases, reshaped and reworked until they finally belonged together.
“We’re just surprised it all sounds cohesive,” Goddard admits.
When In Verses debuted at number one, it was a moment, but not the one that mattered most.
“The fact that a heavy band right now can get that… that shit’s just not happening,” Kenny says. “So the fact that it has happened, that’s a cool nod.”
Karnivool have never bowed to industry expectations, so the charts were always going to be secondary. What mattered more was what happened in the live rooms.
“The validation came with not so much the number one or how it’s perceived in the industry,” Goddard says, “but seeing the real visceral reactions from people to some of the songs and moving people and helping people, because that’s really what makes me tick.”
That connection is what Karnivool have always chased, even when they didn’t know if they’d get there again.
“I think this thing serves us as much as it serves any fans,” Kenny says. “It’s sort of our own therapeutic way to understand a few things… but by God, we didn’t think it would take 13 years.”
Karnivool are now taking the record back to where it’s always made the most sense: the stage.
Their upcoming Australian tour, alongside UK prog outfit Tesseract and US experimental force Car Bomb, wasn’t assembled by accident: it came out of a shared moment at ArcTanGent Festival, where both bands left a mark.
“We saw Tesseract play for the first time in a while and they just dominated,” Kenny says.
Car Bomb, on the other hand, hit differently. “I think they’re doing something with rhythm that’s really, really fresh and new,” Goddard says. “It really kind of changed my brain in the same way that J Dilla or Meshuggah did. I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you could do that.’”
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There’s just one catch: Karnivool are still figuring out how to play their new material live.
“We write and record together and put it together bit by bit,” Kenny says. “Then we get into a rehearsal room and go, ‘Right… how are we going to play this?’”
“A song like ‘Salva’… that’s not written by two guitarists,” Goddard says. “We’ve got to arrange that.”
But that uncertainty is where things start to come alive.
“To me, it feels like the song’s just beginning its life,” he adds.
That process — of pulling something apart and rebuilding it in real time — is part of what makes a Karnivool show feel fluid, even now. By the time they return from Europe and step onto stages like the Hordern Pavilion and Brisbane Riverstage, the set will be refined but not fixed, because it never really is.
For Kenny, the real magic happens in the moments you can’t rehearse.
“There are moments when the whole band hits this flow state,” he says. “You stop thinking and you’re purely feeling and you’re just part of this thing that’s moving together and it’s speaking something different.”
It’s a feeling that’s hard to manufacture and impossible to fake — the point where everything clicks and the music takes over.
For all the complexity behind In Verses, the goal of this next chapter is surprisingly simple.
“The world’s a pretty fucking weird place. So whatever’s happening on this record that can help, which is what it’s all about,” Kenny says. “That’s the whole reason this whole music thing is around, to sort of help and offer somewhere else to go and hold space if you need it.
“If people can walk away from this feeling a bit better than how they arrived, that’s a fucking win.”
And after 13 years, that might be the only metric that matters.
Ticket information for Karnivool’s tour can be found here.
