Madder Mortem’s ‘Brute Pop’ Grows With New ‘Eight Ways’ Album

Some band's blow their studio recording budget on frivolous things. But a smart band, like Norway's Madder Mortem, invests the money. Madder Mortem bought brand new equipment to record 'Eight Ways,' their first album since 2006 and their fifth studio album overall.

Singer Agnete Kirkevaag told Noisecreep, "The writing process was pretty much as usual. Quite a bit of the material for 'Eight Ways' was ready half-a-year or a year or so before recording it. The reason the recording took so long was that we did it all ourselves this time around and that means quite a lot of logistics, like rebuilding our rehearsal space and ordering, waiting for and setting up equipment. In addition, doing it ourselves also let us use a lot more time both recording and mixing, which was lovely. We had time to experiment and really pay attention to detail."

Detail is crucial for a veteran band like Madder Mortem, who dole out lushly progressive, female-fronted metal. "It's an album that will still be interesting after you've heard it twenty times," Kirkevaag said. "It's music with both a heart and a brain ... and a few catchy choruses, too! Since it's groovy, melodic, quirky and wide-ranging heavy music, we like to call it 'brute-pop.'" Ex-guitarist Christian Ruud twiddled the knobs for the record, too.

Kirkevaag also believes that the band's geographical locale - the gorgeous Norwegian countryside - affects their writing process. "There is a serenity and an organic feel in our surroundings," the singer said. "The smells, sounds and sights that you just don't get in a city are here and there are no other musicians around to influence you! That might be why we end up sounding different. But I also think the cultural inheritance of being raised in a small town in the countryside is a very defining factor of who we are and what we do."