Article submitted courtesy of Sawyer Hildebrandt.
The world of black metal has seen its fair share of shakeups in recent years. Deafheaven’s 2013 full-length debut, Sunbather, ditched decades of strictly-defined sonic blueprints and bleak aesthetic in favor alt-rock tendencies and a pink album cover. In 2015, the one-woman black metal machine, Myrkur, further challenged the elitist stranglehold on the genre with her widely acclaimed debut, M (available now via Relapse Records).
Equally indebted to Mayhem as she is to Mozart, Myrkur strikes a balance between the raw onslaught of second-wave black metal and the seraphic melodies of a choral ensemble. Nowhere is this blend better represented than M’s first single, “Nattens Barn”, where haunting and delicate vocal harmonies give way to blast beats and distortion-drenched dissonance. But don’t just take my word for it, see for yourself:
For her first stint on US soil Myrkur has thrown her support in with blackened death titans Behemoth, as they play their 2013 magnum opus, The Satanist, in it’s entirety – a tour that is certain to serve up the genre at it’s most brutal and most beautiful.
Myrkur is set to hit the stage in Thalia Hall at 8:30 this Friday (doors open at 7:30). Pick up a ticket to what is guaranteed to be killer show for $25 online or $30 at the door. For those of you not in Chicago, catch Behemoth and Myrkur on their path of destruction as they rip through Minneapolis, MN, Lawrence, KS, and Denver, CO on their way westward for the remainder of the tour.