Heavy Song of the Week: Myrkur Ushers in a Cooling Blast of Autumnal Black Metal on “Valkyriernes Sang”

Jon Hadusek
·3 min read

The post Heavy Song of the Week: Myrkur Ushers in a Cooling Blast of Autumnal Black Metal on “Valkyriernes Sang” appeared first on Consequence.

Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, the top selection goes to “Valkyriernes Sang” by Myrkur.

Myrkur’s forthcoming album, Spine, is shaping up to be a genre-spanning opus from the project’s mastermind Amalie Brunn. The singles we’ve heard so far — both of which have been “Honorable Mention” picks on our weekly heavy song rundown — see Brunn expanding beyond Myrkur’s black-metal roots and into the realms of dream-pop and post-metal. They’re great songs, but they hardly classify as black metal. And we do love the harsher side of Myrkur.

On the third single from the album, “Valkyriernes Sang,” Brunn evokes the atmospheric black metal sound of her early Myrkur releases in the song’s instrumentation and overall sonic palette. The obligatory tremolo picking, blast beats, and goblin cries are all here — as are the ethereal vocal arrangements present on the aforementioned Spine singles.

The balance between melody and harshness immediately recalls the autumnal sounds of Ulver’s Bergtatt — not quite as stark and icy as the other more atonal examples of atmospheric black metal. That shouldn’t be surprising considering Brunn has worked with Ulver’s Kristoffer Rygg in the past. Though she’s been downplaying any overtly metallic influences as of late, “Valkyriernes Sang” is rooted in the established traditions of the black metal genre and filtered through Myrkur’s current aesthetical approach. It’s the most captivating of the Spine singles thus far.

Honorable Mentions:

Cirith Ungol – “Looking Glass”

Before the first turnaround in Cirith Ungol’s latest single “Looking Glass,” frontman Tim Baker bellows: “Gaze into your doom.” It triggers the band to bring the tempo to a crushingly slow death march — doom, quite literally. In this section, guitarist Jimmy Barraza and Greg Lindstrom unfurl some of the most beautiful, melodic axework to ever grace a Cirith Ungol record. The band has always been championed as forerunners of the US power metal movement — implying speed and maximalism — but its ability to doom-out shouldn’t be discounted. It’s been a part of the group’s repertoire from the beginning.

HEALTH – “Children of Sorrow” (feat. Lamb of God’s Willie Adler)

The tagline attached to HEALTH’s newly announced album RAT WARS reads thus: “It’s The Downward Spiral for people with at least two monitors and a vitamin D deficiency.” Honestly, that sounds pretty damn depressing, but HEALTH have embraced their Internet-driven following — the band arguably got more popular during the pandemic — and continue to collaborate with any-and-everyone, dishing out electro-industrial bangers at a prolific clip. On “Children of Sorrow,” they tapped Lamb of God’s Willie Adler for some heavy riffs, making good on those Nine Inch Nails comparisons in the process. White-hot digital heat.

Static-X – “Z0mbie”

Some would say it’s impossible to replace the late Wayne Static. While that’s certainly the case in regards to the late Static-X frontman’s larger-than-life persona and the man himself, the band’s mysterious new singer Xer0 has done an admirable job fronting the band’s live shows. The new song “Z0mbie” features Xer0’s vocals, and is upbeat and over-the-top — as any Static-X song is wont to be — and arrives just in time for the band’s tour with Sevendust. The track is powered by a guitar riff written and recorded by Wayne before his passing, as his invigorating spirit lives on in the current iteration of Static-X.

Heavy Song of the Week: Myrkur Ushers in a Cooling Blast of Autumnal Black Metal on “Valkyriernes Sang”
Jon Hadusek

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