Myrkur’s Amalie Bruun has always paved her own path and challenged underground preconceptions of heavy genres. Just after newfound motherhood, Bruun set out on a journey into the very heart of the Scandinavian culture that marked her own childhood with on her latest album, Folkesange. Available today on Relapse
Records, Folkesange
relinquishes black metal for a refined yet far-reaching evocation of traditional folk, combining songs ancient and new to sublimely resonant effect.
On Myrkur‘s first two full-length studio albums (2015’s M and 2017’s Mareridt), she recast black metal in the most personal yet expansive of terms, their blending of Bruun‘s Danish folk roots with tempestuous internal struggles breathing new life into a subgenre whose followers can be rigidly possessive.
After the nightmare-induced visions that wrought themselves throughout 2017’s immensely acclaimed Mareridt, Folkesange offers an emotional sanctuary, a means to reconnect to something permanent and nature-aligned. It’s an awareness that’s become deeply bound to the album’s organic, regenerative spirit.
Storytelling, rites of passage, and the invocation of a continuity that passes through time and generation are all part of folk music’s tapestry, and Folkesange taps into all these currents in their most essential form. In part a purist’s approach to the genre, free from over-interpretation and fusion, the use of Kulning (an ancient Scandinavian herding call) and traditional instruments throughout, such as nyckelharpa, lyre and mandola offer a
deeper, more tactile connection to their source, an unbroken line of communication back to the past.
But the album is no museum piece; it resonates in the here and now, aided by the spacious production of Heilung member and musical collaborator Christopher Juul. Cinematic yet intimate, Folkesange exists in a state of boundless reverie, bourne by string-led drones, cyclical, elegiac rhythms and Bruun‘s frictionless voice, all carrier signals for deep-rooted, ancestral memories, and associations felt on an elemental level.
An immersive experience in its own right, but also belonging to a wider, pagan folk-based renaissance that has attracted a devoted following worldwide, Folkesange answers a need that has become ever more pressing in turbulent times. A zeroing in on a resonance that is both intrinsic and enduring, it’s a rediscovery of personal grounding, and an experience that reaches beyond culture to remind us of a shared, deeply rooted inheritance. A tuning fork that binds the personal and the universal, Folkesange is a reminder that the most transcendent experiences are those closest to home.
Folkesange Tracklisting:
1 – Ella
2 – Fager som en Ros
3 – Leaves of Yggdrasil
4 – Ramund
5 – Tor i Helheim
6 – Svea
7 – Harpens Kraft
8 – Gammelkäring
9 – House Carpenter
10 – Reiar
11 – Gudernes Vilje Vinter
Myrkur Live Dates:
07/04: Montreux, CH – Montreux Jazz Club
07/09 – 07/11: Gefle, SE – Gefle Metal Festival
07/18: Otrada Estate, RU – Russia Metal Meeting
07/24 – 07/25: Sibiu, RO – ARTmania Festival
08/05 – 08/08: Jaroměř, CZ – Brutal Assault Festival
08/12 – 08/15: Wittelshofen, DE – Summer Breeze Open Air
08/13 – 08/15: Borre Vestfold, NO – Midgardsblot