[photo by Naya Buch]
Danish black metal ensemble ORM announces its second album, which has been given the title Ir, and is now set for release through Indisciplinarian on August 30th. With the announcement, an album trailer including artwork and the first album sounds has been released. ORM has also announced several Danish shows, among those a release show in Copenhagen.
ORM (Danish for “serpent”) formed in 2015, and in 2017, the band released its first and eponymous album through Indisciplinarian. Orm arose with its mythical tales of man and nature accompanied by a grandiose, melodic yet raw and direct black metal which in an idiosyncratic manner unites music and narrative into an embodied and present whole. After the release, the band played a string of profiled shows in Denmark, including a successful winter tour with labelmates Solbrud in 2017. This tour included a sold-out concert hall at Denmark’s National Broadcasting Company, before the band ended the album cycle with a well-attended performance at Copenhell 2018.
The next chapter of ORM‘s history is Ir. The album consists of the two compositions – “Klippens Lyse Hal” (“The Light Hall Of the Cliff”) and “Bær Solen Ud” (“Carry Out the Sun”) — both of which clock in between twenty-three and twenty-four minutes in length. The band’s guitarist and singer Simon Sonne Andersen produced the album, and the band has also designed the record’s visual side themselves.
On Ir, the contrasts are bigger, the complex is more complex, the simple even simpler and the melodies are poignant and contagious. The form is elongated, dynamic and adventurous, and the musical ambition and performance bears witness to an ensemble void of compromise and led solely by its own flame, wherever it may lead. The album’s narration revolves around the impermanence of all things and is a personal reflection on how this aspect is contained within the human drama, religion and nature.
A trailer for Ir including the cover art and the first sounds from the album is playing RIGHT HERE.
Indisciplinarian will release Ir on LP, cassette, and digital platforms on August 30th. Watch for preorders, additional audio previews, and more to be issued in the weeks ahead.
Ir Track Listing:
1. Klippens Lyse Hal
2. Bær Solen Ud
ORM also reveals three new Danish shows. The day before the release, the band will play a release show in Copenhagen, and two November shows in Aarhus and Odense are added to the concert plans which include a performance at the Raise Your Horns Festival in the band’s home island of Bornholm.
ORM Live 2019:
8/29/2019 Alice – København, DK [info] *Ir release show
9/13-14/2019 Raise Your Horns Festival – Rønne, DK [info]
11/01/2019 Headquarters – Aarhus, DK
11/02/2019 Studenterhuset – Odense, DK
Musicologist Tore Tvarnø Lind has taken his time to listen and formulate these words on Ir:
“To lose somebody is a shared experience. Ir (‘verdigris’) is a way of carrying on with a loved one who is no longer in life, who decidedly put an end to it. Struggling not to dissolve, ORM creates a mythology to withstand grief and to find meaning in fate. A doubtful comfort, though, the myth betrays, and the answer is but an empty echo.
Ir is a patient monster, a malachite born with a thousand green eyes, a black metal dies irae. Ir is the day of wrath with the solemnity of a requiem. ORM carries out the dead, who is sunlight, down ancient and secret pathways to the halls of light. A paradox, Ir is also the means to learn to embrace and respect the other’s will to die. Clad in black, ORM sees the dead sprouting from the mold anew. The tenderness in the elegy voices the complexity of grief itself.
The drama is local, and death within close proximity. Topographical designators such as Opalsøen and the Syvmaster that grew by Bastemosen, places the mournful pilgrimage that is Ir in the midst of the ancient woods of Bornholm, the easternmost island of Denmark. Restless memories haunt the wildlife here. Ir is an oath spoken with the mythical creatures of the underground, a sacred oath to fight oblivion. Ir is the black riders armed with hammer-horns, impure voices, and swords of strength, who thunder toward the edge of the Hammer cliff in glorious dust. Ir is the sun setting over the glow of humankind.
The ice skating silhouettes in the monochrome pictures are long gone. We shall all share their fate, but not just yet. They remind us that we, too, will be lost one day. Maybe hoping that love shone upon our face once. Underneath the ice, in waters dark and murky, the worm dwells over grey granite. The worm is an heir of a bygone era, at a time when the moon was humble.”
ORM:
Simon Sonne Andersen – guitar. vocals
Theis Wilmer Poulsen – guitar, vocals
Troels Cort Nielsen – bass
Adam Schønemann – drums
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