Live Review: Myrkur – Manchester

The first of only two UK shows on this, the band’s first tour in six years, Danish solo musician and artist, Amallie Bruun’s Black Metal project, Myrkur rolls into Manchester on a Tuesday night when the region is being fairly-well battered by some blustery gales.

There’s a healthy early turnout for support act, Jonathan Hultén, one time lead guitarist of Tribulation and now operating as a solo artist. Perhaps performer might be a more accurate term as Jonathan takes to the stage in a costume more elaborate than anything Lordi were wearing last Monday. In front of an arboreal arch, he is accompanied by the sound of waves breaking and a distant cathedral organ. Choral chants usher in the strains of Bach’s Toccat and Fugue in D Minor, giving the whole tune something of an antique quality.

Jonathan sounds like an early modern minstrel, moving from town to town, regaling stories and has the kind of Folk sound Zeppelin would have killed for. His sparse use of his semi-acoustic guitar is offset by his adopting a multi-layered vocal effect, complete with accompanying bird song and a sort of ethereal grace. Even his movements match the music perfectly, beginning the evening’s entertainment in a cryptic manner.

Myrkur’s backdrop is the project’s logo spelled out in trees, simple but effective and matching the beginning of the performance. No bombast, no slow-burn intro tape, just the band taking the stage and plugging in. Opening with the long, sustained chord of Bålfærd, Ms Brunn is absent for a while, revealed only at the microphone stand, the pink light bathing the stage broken by blue. Like Humans breaks the ambient spell, having the vibes of an updated version of the FFGM sound of the early noughties.

But the time Mothlike’s gentle opening comes around you start to wonder if this will be a full playthrough of the Spine album. The unmistakeable synth sound gives this one an Eighties feel, Amallie’s easy tones a pleasure to the ears. The introduction of My Blood Is Gold comes with a statement that Manchester audiences are the best in Europe, as this, Spine and Valkyriernes Sang reinforce the idea this is a full record set.

It’s only when Ms Brunn straps on a guitar and leads the band through 2014’s Dybt I Skoven that the show takes a more aggressive turn and looks to the project’s Black Metal roots. It’s not the maelstrom of a Mayhem or Marduk, but it does demonstrate how the edges of the genre can be pulled to suit the desires of the artist. The Serpent is loaded with a catchy bottom end, Crown’s slow and plodding riff becomes a platform for Amallie’s voice to be put through its not-inconsiderable paces, while she goes a bit Stevie Nicks with a tambourine on Blazing Sky.

Jonathan is invited back to the stage to provide musical accompaniment to Folkesange’s House Carpenter, the most overtly Folky song on the setlist tonight, but one which carries with it a simple but devastatingly effective result. One comment on social media stated this alone was worth a long trip to Manchester, and you can’t help but agree.

Bonden og Kragen and Leaves of Yggdrasil close the main body of the show with a distinctly folky-flavour. The first being the tale of a farmer and a crow, taking us all back to the seventeenth century; while the second conjures lush green planes and woodlands off to the horizon.

Mareridt’s Ulvinde is the first of the encores, full of soaring vocals and fuzzed-up doomy guitars; and the same record’s Death of Days is getting a series of debut performances on this tour. Written as a funeral song, and built around a sombre guitar and heavy low end, it’s the perfect way to close the show and send us out into the night wondering whether we’ve just witnessed something resulting from the US eclipse yesterday or from the switching back on of the LHC.

Myrkur’s show was about as elementary as these things get. Four quality musicians, their instruments, simple lighting and a whole load of talent to bring it all to life. Tick, tick, tick and one very big tick.