Live at the Arena Vienna

Myrkur: Eternal battle against misogyny and clichés

She finds her creative power in the Nordic darkness: Amalie Bruun aka Myrkur.

(Bild: Gobinder Jhitta)

On Tuesday, Denmark's Amalie Bruun aka Myrkur plays her biggest Austrian concert to date in the large hall of the Vienna Arena. With her fourth album "Spine" behind her, the 39-year-old is slowly freeing herself from the eternal clichés and prejudices that stick to her like glue.

In no other genre in the world is one measured as strictly by appearance and outward posture as in black metal. Uniformity, corpse paint, grumpy moods and, best of all, a latent hint of aggression in every everyday situation should be the be-all and end-all of the genre cliché. No wonder the proportion of women in the sinister subgenre is rather low. Amalie Bruun is not at all as dark as she likes to present herself on stage. The 39-year-old Dane has been successful for some time under the banner of Myrkur (which means darkness) and enjoys a growing fan following. With her debut album "M" (2015), she remained largely under the cloak of anonymity, but the follow-up "Mareridt" (2017) made her a genre star, and with the folky successor "Folkesange" (2020), she involuntarily opened the coronavirus pandemic and climbed into the top 20 of the charts in Germany.

Between reality show and black metal
For genre purists, Myrkur's success is still a red rag. This is partly due to obvious misogyny, but also because of Bruun's background. Before her career in the black metal segment, she was a ballet dancer, a pop star with her former band Ex Cops, composed the theme song for the Danish reality show "Paradise Hotel" and has repeatedly appeared in music videos and commercials. While some hate preachers saw her as the incarnate destruction of an entire scene, others accused her of being a "casting show metalhead". "When you survive shitstorms like that, nothing unhinges you," Bruun told us in an interview with Krone back in 2019, when she completely sold out the small hall at the Vienna Arena, "I became an object of hate, even though I didn't do anything. If I don't like Britney Spears, then I'll just leave her alone."

In the fall of 2023, Myrkur released her third studio album, "Spine", and took the next big step in her career. Consequently, she is now also playing in the Arena's large hall. What the diehards in black metal don't understand is the irony of their hatred. Black metal per se stands for breaking down boundaries, being different and tearing down existing dogmas and clichés - all things that Myrkur sufficiently fulfills through herself and her music. "I certainly get a lot of positive feedback from women. I would be delighted if I could encourage other women to go on stage and play black metal with the Myrkur project." On stage, Bruun combines feminine elements with a dark stage design, harsh musical excursions and a folklore that belongs to the North. "I want to spread emotions to bring out a certain malaise in people."

Live in Vienna
On April 16, Myrkur will be performing the new album "Spine" for the first time in the large hall of the Vienna Arena. The opening act will be the Swede Jonathan Hultén, who caused a sensation some time ago with Tribulation and has since followed a much more folkloristic path solo. Tickets for the concert are still available at www.oeticket.com and at the Arena box office.