Few artists have generated more press in 2014 than Danish black metal act, Myrkur, the one-woman project of Amelie Bruun. Her debut album has clear roots in the 2nd-wave tradition, but displays a number of other traits as well, notably the use of clean, almost angelic-sounding vocals.
Though there has been a significant amount of debate, discussion and review of the new record, I hadn't seen a lot of interviews. So I went ahead and asked Amelie a few questions, leading to some very detailed and revealing answers.
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Metal Injection: First of all, congratulations on the release of your first album! What motivated you to create an album like this? Had you wanted to create something with a black metal influence for a long time?
Myrkur: Thank you. I have made this music for many years. I have my musical roots in classical music, choir music and Norse folk music. I started to combine all these sounds of my heart with metal many years ago. I am today quite moved by and a little bit surprised that this music, that I have essentially made since I was a child, is being heard by many people now. I wrote folk songs and choir pieces from a young age about the Icelandic sagas, mainly on piano or my violin and Myrkur does not feel very different from what I created back then. Therefore it feels immensely satisfying and (lack of better English words) full circle for me to release this EP now.
Black metal in one form or another has been around since the mid-1980s. What do you think drives people to continue making new black metal records today?
I can only answer this for myself. I long for something pure and to be united with the nature I grew up around. I seek a connection to mankind and womanhood, nature and gods around me. This is why it saddens me when nature gets torn down to make room for empty and impure things. I grew up in a place where you are allowed to believe in trolls and elves and the power of Thor's hammer. This sounds perhaps bad to some ears, but believing in aliens or a man who walks on water is considered perfectly okay.
There have always been men to defend the right to destroy the pure and the natural. But never perhaps at any time, has the attack on these things been more violent than right now. Maybe therefore some people are seeking it out through music, communities and movements such as black metal today.
It's been noted that you derive a lot of inspiration from your homeland in Denmark. Is it mostly the landscape and its medieval history? Or is there a broader range of Danish history (the Renaissance for instance) and culture that you draw from?
It is the beautiful combination of all of it. The frozen nature of Scandinavia, the winter darkness, the midnight summer sun that keeps us restlessly awake, the cold sea that my family bathes in all year long.
I went to a slightly nonconforming school in my town where they taught Norse Mythology in the history class. I think in Scandinavia we have little bit darker approach to for example 'children's stuff'. The lullabies, the fairy tales, is not just good or bad and they never talk down to the children as if they could only understand one-dimensional things. They tell us there is good and evil in everyone, man and woman, god and man, darkness and light, harshness and beauty. I have learned after I started to travel outside of the North, that perhaps what I considered normal in my childhood was not normal elsewhere. As a little girl I liked to play with my invisible dead sister who I called Tjatja. My mother was not against this and Tjatja was always invited to the dinner table. But when I told this to other people elsewhere, they thought it sounded terrible. When I was moved from my first beloved school to a different one, I very much started to dislike going to school. I had 1 friend there and her name was Rikke. We used to cut ourselves and each other's faces to get out of school, so we would come to school bleeding and say that we had fallen off our bikes and get sent home. Sometimes she would paint parts of me black and blue as well. I told this story to some friends of mine, that have never been to Scandinavia, and I was surprised to see their reaction. It seemed as thought they did not wish to be friends with me anymore, just because of this thing I did as a 12 year-old.
I was allowed the freedom to be wild/in the wilderness and discover my primal scream in the forest. My mother was very proud of me that I had found it, so deep inside me. That I had found my ancient powers. I was allowed to scream into the darkness and also to play Schubert on my violin. No one lied to me and told me that this is not okay. Therefore moving in between different musical genres has always been natural for me, because no one has told me that a woman or a man is a one-dimensional creature who can only do very few things. So combining metal with classical music, choral vocals etc was something I happily started doing. I carry with me Denmark and my upbringing everywhere I go and with everything I do.
There's a perception among metalheads that the indie/alternative community looks down on metal as boorish, insensitive and unsophisticated. Have you run into this perception among non-metal musicians and audiences?
No I have not. Most people I meet have tremendous respect for black metal and the musicians that play it. I have been met by brave, music-loving people. Even if someone does not like my music or metal in general, the majority of what I see is curious human beings who want to experience all different kinds of music.
But I have been met, particularly by indie-rock writers, with an enormously misunderstood idea and picture of black metal and Scandinavian culture. Because it is something foreign and exotic to them, they need to paint their own inaccurate picture of it, in order to understand it and feel comfortable. Which is perhaps why those types of writers write reviews of my EP that have nothing to do with the actual music, but focus on all those things they somehow feel they can understand, judge and put into perspective that they know from their world. Instead of freeing themselves and going somewhere unknown and letting their ears and hearts speak to them.
Though I personally like the color it adds to your music, there may be some metal purists who take exception to your inclusion of clean vocals layered on top of black metal styled-guitars and drums. How would you confront this attitude?
I wouldn't. I would say to them: listen to the music that you personally like.
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