Heavyweight power trio Norna have released their second album, a self-titled full-length through Berlin’s Pelagic Records.
Hailing in parts from the icy Swedish northlands and the glacial expanse of the Swiss Alps, named after the three Norse goddesses of fate who wove the very tapestry of fate underneath the mythical World Tree, Norna aren’t messing around. Their debut album, 2021’s ‘Star is way way is Eye’ was saturated filth; uncompromising, unrelenting ugliness. This though, their eponymous sophomore offering, digs its claws deeper into the dirt. Sharpened, hungry and desperate, born of the moment and yet years in the making; ‘Norna’ liberates an old rage that has been suppressed for far too long.
Despite only forming in 2020, the three pillars of Norna bring decades of heaviness with them. Consisting of Swedish post-hardcore pioneer Tomas Liljedahl (Breach, The Old Wind) and Swiss stalwarts Christophe Macquat and Marc Theurillat (both of instrumental juggernaut Ølten), Norna came together as a perfect storm of abrasive influences, harnessed by friend and producer Magnus Lindberg (Cult of Luna), to create something new, limitless and terrifying.
Norna’s album opener & latest single ‘Samsara’ feels like a blow to the head. Breakdown after breakdown slow us to an agonising crawl as post-hardcore pioneer Tomas Liljedahl howls like a man possessed. The international power-trio of heavyweight veterans have come together to craft something raw, visceral and uncomfortably alive that speaks to the primal urges that we do our best to keep hidden in the shadows.
Sculpted the same way as their debut album, with ideas and hooks hewn from a mass of noise held quite literally in the clouds (Dropbox being the band’s platform of choice), Norna this time entered the process with a vision; a final, horrific form in mind. As such, the eponymous record pushes their boundaries even further beyond the extreme, with even the briefest moments of calm quickly curdled by the band’s use of insidious ambient synthesisers, manipulated samples and even more distortion.
There’s a similar nefarious theme to the lyrics on ‘Norna’ too, with Tomas delving into the world of light and dark to explore ideas of duplicity, morality and expose all of the actions and feelings that humanity prefers to keep in the shadows.
