Next Friday will see the official release of one of the most highly anticipated albums of the year so far, namely, «Norwegian Gothic» by Årabrot. The (indirect) successor of «Who Do You Love» (we’ll get to all that happened in between in a bit) sees the band collaborate with a long string of musicians, namely, Lars Horntveth (Jaga Jazzist), cellist Jo Quail, Tomas Järmyr (Motorpsycho), Anders Møller (Turbonegro, Ulver), and Massimo Pupillo (Zu).

As the band’s mentor Kjetil Nernes explains, the album “is the culmination of everything Årabrot has done musically the past 10 years. It is not only the climax of the band so far, but also a good indication of what to come.” The Norwegian adds that he sees the record as “an amalgamation of all of our influences here in the church where we live,” both musically in the sense of evoking records in their shelves, but also thematically, drawing from their book collection. In other words, it is their “special brand of rock’n’roll music mixed with fin-de-siecle decadence, surrealism and even a pinch of old German philosophy to boot.” Below, listen to four of sixteen songs that comprise «Norwegian Gothic», namely, «The Lie», «Kinks Of The Heart», «Hailstones For Rain», and «Hallucinational».

«Norwegian Gothic» is set for release on April 9 through Pelagic Records on cd, digital, and vinyl formats. Pre-orders are available here (digital) and here (cd and vinyl).

Above, we stated that «Norwegian Gothic» could be seen as an indirect successor to «Who Do You Love» and the reason for that indirectness lies with the other pieces released in the meantime. To recap, «Who Do You Love» was released on September 7, 2018, by Pelagic Records and can be heard below.

A few months later, more concretely on April 5, 2019, the band released «Die Nibelungen», a soundtrack to the silent film of the same name by the legendary Fritz Lang.

Then came the «The World Must Be Destroyed» EP, originally recorded during the «Who Do You Love», with Nernes explaining that all of its songs are “inspired by Antonin Artaud‘s insane masterwork – his ‘biography’ of child emperor Heliogabalus. Hallucinatory, sadistic, overly sexual and above all just completely nutters.” The EP was released earlier this year, on January 22, also by Pelagic Records.