Friday 22 September 2017

It's Autumn so here come all the new releases.... Admittedly Mareidt is more a freezing winter album but timing isn't everything

On her second full length album Myrkur has really mixed things up and its very impressive. The ferocious black metal is largely gone and replaced in part by a slower grinding metal more in line with Sabbath - this is shown to great effect on the Serpent

It's produced by Randall Dunn who's previous work includes Sunn O))) and Wolves in the Throne Room and some of that influence is evident here

Elsewhere the opening track is all Danish herding calls (!) and ominous storms before Maneblot arrives in a maelstrom of vicious riffing and screams, easily the blackest metal of the album. Even then there are clean vocals and a bit of a Scandinavian jig halfway through

The duet with Chelsea Wolfe is more in line with the guests musical output but is still fantastic.

Within the bonus tracks there are a couple of real oddities.... Bornehjem is all sweet choral work whilst a seriously creepy child's voice explains why it want to hurt people. Very, very strange
At the other end of the spectrum Death of Days could easily be played on daytime radio. Its an exquisitely sung, slightly downbeat tune

Overall it's going to take a while to get my head round all the styles on show but this is an artist spreading her wings and not afraid to mix the beauty with the brutal