With Folkesange, Danish composer Myrkur (Amalie Bruun) undergoes what is, by now, a black metal rite of passage—she’s produced a stripped-down traditional folk album. Folkesange has a welcome focus on Bruun’s vocal dexterity, and reinterprets durable arcane compositions to reflect a very modern world. Here, swashes of vocal processing and mysterious reverb imitate a voice dancing over the green vales.
The more you unpeel the connection between black metal and folk, the stranger it becomes. Both genres have a focus on tradition—but black metal’s traditions are near-exclusively in the domain of swordsmen, conquesters and trolls. There has, at times, been a similarly Tolkien-inspired yet uncomfortably eugenic focus on race; far rarer has that focus extended to what these ancient paragons of people did. Folk, by contrast, is the music of working people (clue’s in the name, dummy).
Folkesange regularly calls on the traditions of these workers—most notably in the kulning which bookends ‘Fager som en Ros’ and ‘Tor i Helheim’. Traditions like these cattle-calls were enforced by the daily grind; they’re practices which pushed through the cracks of people’s routines like moss, and announced themselves as vital. The original “milkman’s cheery whistle”.
There is thus a deeper humanism to Folkesange than Myrkur’s previous releases. The cold death of guitars is supplanted by warm vocal harmonies. Any stringed instruments present are isolated into pockets of staccato plucking. The posturing and machismo of black metal is stripped away—revealing Scandinavian culture for the slightly puckish and playful thing it’s always been. The exaltation of women is foregrounded, too, and in a more sincere way than having men grow their hair out and get it silky-smooth with Pantene. Even down to its cover—feminine, floral and sun-soaked—Folkesange finds Myrkur boldly confronting her own image.
The result is a beautiful, contradictory album which would probably play better in a biddie-filled Yorkshire pub than the offices of Kerrang. Closing track ‘Vinter’ illustrates this wonderfully—led by piano and choir, we marvel at the delicacy and beauty of snow. The roaring winds are settled, the sky is clear, and the earth is glittering at our feet.
Folkesange is available for purchase and streaming here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe