THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Operating out of Djura Missionshus, their home studio in the deconsecrated church in rural Sweden where they live with their two children, Årabrot are the iconic duo of singer-guitarist Kjetil Nernes and his wife, singer-keyboardist Karin Park.
With origins going back 20 years now, Årabrot’s list of achievements is long: Collaborating with fellow innovators like Stephen O’Malley and Lustmord; working with such producers as Steve Albini and Billy Anderson; winning a Norwegian Grammy. Nernes also has the distinction of being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and making a full recovery.
Through all this, their sound has been in a perpetual state of flux. With the early material traversing the roughest edges of The Birthday Party and Swans, and with inspiration taken from esoteric sources — “fin-de-siècle decadence, surrealism and even a pinch of old German philosophy to boot,” in Nernes’ words — each release has seen more and more risks taken.
The band’s friend and collaborator Lustmord has written: “Born of the long dark winters of Norway, Årabrot was too black for metal and too avant-garde for punk, so it forged its own path… It is The Velvet Underground if Johnny Cash was a member and Nico was able to sing. It is Camus, Sartre, Poe and Burroughs, cut up and regurgitated in an unholy erotic mass.”
In recent years, Årabrot’s winding path has led toward absolute rock ’n’ roll perfection — and this transformation is fully realized now on the upcoming new album, Of Darkness And Light. The album bursts with infectious melodies and shines with the massive production of Alain Johannes, whose work on Mark Lanegan’s 2020 album Straight Songs Of Sorrow won over Nernes, and whom, as a musician, has performed with the likes of PJ Harvey and Them Crooked Vultures.
Theatrical, bombastic, dancing on the line between the macabre and the comical, Of Darkness And Light is, among other things, a celebration of the hooks and swagger and almighty power of rock. The Birthday Party and Swans are still references, yes, but so are Queens Of The Stone Age and Ghost. Fittingly, the album’s title references Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a philosophical text centered on transcending our own limitations.
Of the single You Cast Long Shadows, Park states: “Kjetil was asked to write a song for Sebastian Bach’s new album. We weren’t too schooled up on Sebastian Bach to be honest, but Kjetil thought it would be interesting to write a grungy Crowleyan occult murder ballad. He spent a few days in the studio and wrote two demos which were both immediately rejected by Sebastian Bach’s management. One of the demos was You Cast Long Shadows. It’s probably a better fit for Årabrot anyway!”
