I apologize in advance for the following rant and self-pitying, but bear with me as I explain the reasons behind why it's taking so long for the next album to be completed. On the other hand this is probably the closest I'll come to "blogging".  I know many of you are waiting faithfully, and I suppose a lot of you are also wondering about when you can expect the album to be out and why it's taking so long between each update.

Let's begin where things usually start - at the beginning. When I founded Myrkgrav music was a hobby and creative outlet. Writing riffs, arrangements, lyrics and the whole package seemed to come to me easily, and inspiration was never an issue. In short it was just fantastically giving to be able to create music the way I liked it to be and I appreciate it a lot that I was given that opportunity, gift or whatever you want to call it. Somewhere along the road things changed. When I began writing the material for the sophmore album back in the end of 2006 it just didn't work out the way it had before. I'd sit around and play my guitar for hours at the time without anything of significance coming out of it. Every now and then I'd come up with a single riff worth using, but putting these bits and pieces together is painstakingly tedious and I have to admit it has taken a lot of the fun out of writing music. I've been lucky so far though, over the last couple of years I've slowly but securely managed to come up with enough material to fill another full-length album, without just settling for the first and best options. Many ideas and songs have been discarded, slaughtered down and built back up to get them to measure up to my standards. Bear in mind that I'm not speaking about what I think others will enjoy, I'm writing the music solely based on what I think sounds good, so chances are you'd see it different even if you were there during the whole process.

Some people will tell you to take a break from everything music-related when you have inspirational dry-outs. I do think that might work for many, but in my case it didn't. This last summer I didn't really touch an instrument for three months, but when I came back home and would pick it back up it was the same as before - just worse. Others will tell you to try something completely different musically. Well, I thought I'd give that a shot as well, but it didn't really bear any fruit. I'm far from any virtuoso on any instrument; what I do I do okey, but nothing beyond that. It's rather a negative mindset that keeps this evil circle alive, I guess.

Let's talk about lyrics. An enormous amount of time-consuming research goes into writing the lyrics for Myrkgrav. There's the stage of reading through old books to try and find stories that would fit the general theme and then narrowing it down to which story fits the atmosphere of a certain song. Then you have to make it go from what can either be a short paragraph or a chapter-long to a text which will be possible to sing, without losing the sentence structure, collocations and such. Sometimes I have to say I damn myself for making it such a complicated endeavour and wish I could just regurgitate out some kitschy nature-Viking-trolls-and-fairies nonsense, but that just doesn't work. Despite the fact that I guess 90% of you have no idea what I'm singing anyway. The good part is that when it's all done, you can be proud of not taking shortcuts.

Another thing to take into consideration is that one simply can't do everything by oneself, unless of course you're some music savant-virtuoso-blabla. When you hire session musicians things take time, lots of time. People have their own schedules and lives, and so do you, so making things match up without extensive planning is quite the challenge. Just gotta live with that.

I'm not sure where this is heading, but hopefully my point is coming across between all the rants. Basically what I'm saying is that I'm not enjoying the process of making this album as much as I probably should, but that I keep going because I hope it will all be worth it in the end when there's nothing left to worry about. Thank [insert god of choice] the guys at DGF aren't impatient or pushy, I really have to thank them for that. Having heard so many horror-stories about how records have turned out shit because of record labels nagging and demanding, I really see how much of a privilege it is to be on a label that isn't like that. Myrkgrav is signed for three full-length albums, so hopefully I'll be able to deliver that in some years, if my little run-in with my muse happens to have a happy ending.

I think this should be more than enough whining for now, but let me address the current situation with the upcoming album first. It does not have a title yet, although I have at least one in mind. There are 10 songs at the moment, though I think we'll end up with 11, one of them being a more pure folk music piece with only the Hardanger fiddle and possibly a few other acoustic instruments. The 10 songs that are already done all have their guitar/bass/drum arrangements ready, right now we're working on the Hardanger fiddle parts. Only two or three lyrics are ready to be matched with songs, but writing lyrics is my main focus right now, so hopefully more will be done soon-ish. I'm not sure yet if and when we'll record drums, but this will be done in Toproom studio if it comes through. I'm quite happy with the guitar sound as it is, even without the use of an amp, Amplitube 2 with impulse cabinet simulation seems to be working really good. I just need to intonate my guitar right and do some leads over again, haha. Unfortunately Erlend doesn't have his bass guitar at hand at the moment, but the actual bass lines are written for all songs except two; there are even a couple of slap bass parts! Olav will most likely show up at my house in not too long so we can go through and record his Hardanger fiddle parts, which is something I'm really looking forward to as I haven't taken part in recording bowed instruments before. Sindre is still in as the master of choirs in every imaginable harmony, but this time I'll consider doing some lead vocals myself as well, just because I'm self-centred and egoistic.  Every now and then I forget that the album will need some decent artwork with it, I'm not sure how that is going to work out yet as I have no distinctive vision of how the layout should be. All I know is that there's a specific painting I'm hoping to use as the front cover, but right now that painting in all its 3 meter wide glory is hanging high on the wall in an antiques store and I can't afford to buy it for the purpose of using it as my cover. On an interesting side-note, I have another painting of the exact same location, only made in a less realistic style and with more vivid colours, and a lot smaller. Anyway, it's coming together, slowly but surely, and I have to say it's a big step up from Trollskau. I'd really like to give you a sneak-peak at some of the song titles, so here goes:
- Sjuguttmyra (The seven-boy marsh)
- Æljgrava ved Ormtjenn (The moose grave by Ormtjenn)
- Bjønnestussern fra Sandungskælven (The bear gun from Sandungskælven)
- Melbustad'n og Uldrefølket (Melbustad and the mountain people - do a Wikipedia search on "Huldra" to understand this one)

That's all for now. Keep smearing yourselves with patience (like we say here) - one day the album will be out.

Kind regards
Lars Jensen/Myrkgrav