SKUGGSJÁ A Piece for Mind & Mirror 2LP CLEAR nordic prog metal ENSLAVED WARDRUNA

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SKUGGSJÁ A Piece for Mind & Mirror (CLEAR VINYL) 2 x LP

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(Season Of Mist)
*** This is a new and unplayed item, direct from the CRUCIAL BLAST shop. ***

DESCRIPTION FROM CRUCIAL BLAST:
      Also available as a double LP on transparent clear vinyl limited to four hundred fifty copies, presented in a deluxe grey-board gatefold jacket, super heavyweight, printed with glossy black varnish, the records housed in printed innersleeves. Gorgeous! Also available on CD.
      Ingrained with Norwegian folklore and poetic traditions, Skuggsjá first appeared at the Eidsivablot Festival several years ago, a live performance spearheaded by Enslaved's Ivar Bjørnson and Wardruna's Einar Selvik that was commissioned by the festival in commemoration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Norwegian Constitution. Originally set to be a one-off event, the performance consisted of a series of musical pieces that chronicle the history of Norway from the early pre-Christian era through to the modern age; an ambitious project, for sure, which utilized a mixture of traditional Scandinavian instrumentation (taglharpa, kraviklyre, goat horns, birch trumpet, bone flutes, fiddles) and folk music forms along with surges of sweeping metallic power and modern electronics. Up until recently, the only way that you would have been able to experience this music was to be one of the lucky few able to capture Skuggsjá either at that original Eidsivablot appearance, or the subsequent performance at the Roadburn Festival. But now this epic, operatic saga has been recorded in its entirety, presented as a new studio album from the group, with additional musical contributions from Grutle Kjellson and Cato Bekkevold (Enslaved), Lindy Fay Hella (Wardruna) and folk musician Olav Luksengård Mjelva.
      A Piece for Mind & Mirror is a breathtaking tapestry of sounds ancient and contemporary, connected by various threads of traditional Nordic music; early Norse folk traditions are woven into the modern sound of Norwegian metal, the result sounding remarkably unique. As the album opens, the sound of distant tribal drums reverberate beneath dark minor key guitars and ancient bone-flutes, male and female voices reciting verses in Norse tongue that evoke primal, mythic imagery. Far-off drones circle around haunting horns as the sound steadily grows darker and more ominous, eventually building towards the nearly eleven minute eruption of blackened folk-flecked frostblast "Makta Og Vanæra (I All Tid)". The heavier moments like these are unsurprisingly reminiscent of Enslaved's proggy Viking metal, delivering a similar blend of furious double bass, mournful tremolo riffs and a mixture of hellish shrieks and imperious baritone vocals. And echoes of Wardruna's rustic folk appear throughout Mirror as well, especially in those passages driven by choral singing and those thunderous war-drums.
      But this isn't merely a hybrid of the two groups. There is an intense emotional power to songs like "Tore Hund" and "Kvervandi" that's unique to this project, sprawling out into vast, portentous dirges that border on the Neurotic. The instrumental "Skuggeslåtten" starts off with gnarled, medieval-sounding fiddles meeting a fuzz-drenched prog rock riff, later morphing into a mixture of staccato metal chug and regal trumpets, and eventually an onslaught of furious black metal-style blastbeats racing beneath sheets of folk-flecked orchestral drift. Elsewhere, the album slips into hypnotic war-rituals, serpentine guitars intertwining around dark violins, stark vocal harmonies rising with the beating of crow's wings, those narcotized tribal drums beating an incessant tattoo, or open up into fields of dark, sonorous progginess, or fall into sinuous, slithering grooves that transform into a dark technoid throb, streaked with glimmering cosmic electronics.
      In many ways, Skuggsjá is what I've always wished I would hear whenever I'd see something described as "folk metal". The traditional instruments are integrated seamlessly into these arrangements, even the heavier moments, in a manner that is much more organic than many bands that attempt this sort of synthesis. The label cites everything from the ethno-gothic darkness of Dead Can Dance to the shadowy gospel of Woven hand and (naturally) Wardruna's Nordic folk music as reference points in their description for this music; that sort of gives you an idea of what Skuggsjá are doing, but this is also much heavier than one might expect; indeed, much of A Piece for Mind & Mirror resembles some towering Viking version of Neurosis, stark and fearsome and brooding, shot through with surges of blasting metallic fury and sprawls of primal, blackened psychedelia. An absolutely riveting experience.   © CRUCIAL BLAST
THIS IS A NEW, UNPLAYED ITEM. Please note that for LP vinyl orders, we usually remove the vinyl from the jacket prior to shipment in order to avoid seam splits or any other kind sleeve/jacket damage that might occur during transit. This may require that we open the shrinkwrap on the record in order to carefully remove the vinyl from the inside of the jacket (if the record was originally shrinkwrapped). Feel free to contact us with any questions regarding this policy.

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