![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/b5iZW9TMgSWrCk5MChwwoh.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\nFew artists have caused as much of a stir in the metal underground in recent years as Amalie Bruun. The Danish singer-songwriter’s Myrkur project bewitched the black metal scene while infuriating its staunchest purists, making her both a trailblazer for modern extreme metal and a target for trolls. In 2020, Metal Hammer interviewed Amalie for a special look inside her career, her unique writing process and the challenges she’s faced.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/p>\n
An old painting hangs on the wall of the compact, one-storey house an hour\u2019s drive out of Copenhagen that Amalie Bruun<\/a> calls home. It depicts a blonde girl lost in reverie as she walks a grass path high above a fjord: a scene that\u2019s elemental and ethereal at the same time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The picture, by noted Norwegian landscape artist Hans Dahl, belonged to Amalie\u2019s late grandmother, a refined woman who smoked cigarettes from an ivory holder and drank gin and tonic on a Friday morning. Amalie\u2019s mother used to say that it was Amalie in the painting. It\u2019s not hard to see why.<\/p>\n Article continues below <\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \u201cI had a connection to it from before I can remember,\u201d says Amalie today, as we sit at a dining table in a living room that\u2019s one part uncluttered Scandinavian stylishness, one part hygge-style cosiness. \u201cThe album sounds like the painting looks.\u201d<\/p>\n The album she\u2019s referring to is Folkesange, her third as Myrkur<\/a>, the one-woman project she founded in the mists of the early 2010s.<\/p>\n Where Myrkur\u2019s past releases have bridged worlds \u2013 black metal<\/a>, post-rock<\/a>, blackgaze<\/a>, classical \u2013 Folkesange is different. This is traditional Scandinavian music played on traditional Scandinavian instruments, sung predominantly in Danish. There are some covers, some originals, though there\u2019s not a trace of metal in the music or the vocals. It\u2019s all there in the title: Folkesange. Folk Songs.<\/p>\n That Amalie Bruun is releasing an album of sometimes beautiful, sometimes melancholic Scandinavian folk music really shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone who has followed her journey. Partly because that aspect of who she is has always been present in Myrkur\u2019s music \u2013 all she\u2019s doing with Folkesange is separating it out.<\/p>\n But mainly because Amalie Bruun has lived more lives than most other people. That, as much as anything, is what puts her out there on her own.<\/p>\n MYRKUR – Ulvinde (Official Music Video) – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n Two life-changing things have happened since Myrkur\u2019s last album, 2017\u2019s expansive and brilliant Mareridt<\/a>, both inextricably linked.<\/p>\n One: Amalie Bruun got married. Her husband, Keith Abrami, is a fitness instructor and drummer with American death metal band Artificial Brain. The pair became romantically involved after Keith began playing as Myrkur\u2019s touring drummer.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n Keith is around, though he stays in the back bedroom today. This is because he is attending to the second life-changing thing that has happened to Amalie recently: the couple\u2019s nine-week old son, Otto.<\/p>\n If Mareridt was the product of the vivid nightmares its creator endured before making it, Folkesange was defined by pregnancy and the impending birth of her first child.<\/p>\n She describes motherhood as joyous, though in her case the elation is edged with sadness. She discovered she was pregnant soon after she started writing the new album. \u201cBut I miscarried,\u201d she says simply.<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t my normal human self. I become something else<\/p>\n We ask if she\u2019s OK talking about this. She nods, and explains that the miscarriage pushed her deeper into making Folkesange. A few days after entering the studio with producer (and Heilung<\/a> co-founder) Christopher Juul, she discovered she was pregnant again. And that\u2019s when the emotion really hit her.<\/p>\n \u201cI was totally out of it, but in a beautiful way,\u201d she says. \u201cI wasn\u2019t my normal human self. I become something else.\u201d She laughs. \u201cVery nauseated.\u201d<\/p>\n She noticed that her vocals were different. \u201cI never felt so in tune with singing as I did then. I had this power and this clarity, which was crazy. But it was the exact place to be, recording folk vocals with this new life growing in you.\u201d<\/p>\n There were worries, of course, as well as other emotions. One of the songs on the new album, Gudernes Viljie (English translation: \u2018The Will Of The Gods\u2019) is about the miscarriage. \u201cThere were conflicted feelings, dealing with both this new life and this guilt feeling of this other life that never happened,\u201d Amalie explains. \u201cIt was never a heartbeat, but you still feel like a mother. It was very intense.\u201d<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: John McMurtrie)<\/p>\n Amalie Bruun grew up listening to Scandinavian folk music. It resonated with her on a different level. \u201cWith my spirit,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s like in England: you have that singer-songwriter folk tradition, it\u2019s historically ingrained. It shapes who you are, even if you don\u2019t know it. Because it\u2019s folk music, it\u2019s told by people for people. So it\u2019s inherited into the spirit of a population.\u201d<\/p>\n Half of Folkesange\u2019s 12 tracks are her versions of songs that she grew up listening to, while the others are her originals, though you\u2019d be hard pushed to tell which is which. \u201cThis is a record that I wish had existed when I was young,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it doesn\u2019t exist, so I wanted to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n Music, folk or otherwise, is in her blood. Her father, Michael Bruun, is a retired musician. He was semi-famous as a pop singer-songwriter in Denmark in the early 80s. \u201cBut he was not interested in fame,\u201d says Amalie. \u201cHe\u2019s shy and misanthropic.\u201d Does she take after him? She smiles. \u201cI do. Sometimes I wish I didn\u2019t but I do.\u201d<\/p>\n Her mother, by contrast, was a Jungian psychologist. \u201cShe tried her best not to bring her work home, but she did. You get analysed every day.\u201d<\/p>\n My mother tried her best not to bring her work home, but she did. You get analysed every day<\/p>\n As well as folk music, Amalie loved classical music as a child. She learned piano as a toddler, took up violin at five, and eventually attended music college as a teenager. \u201cI wasn\u2019t pushed into anything. It was all my choice. I was never interested in anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n The first metal record Amalie Bruun fell in love with was Transilvanian Hunger, Darkthrone<\/a>\u2019s sub-lo-fi black metal masterpiece. Before that she\u2019d listened to the stuff teenagers listen to: Nirvana<\/a>, Bj\u00f6rk, that kind of thing. Aside from her older brother\u2019s Metallica<\/a> and Judas Priest<\/a> records, she\u2019d never listened to much metal.<\/p>\n \u201cUsually that transition takes years, right?\u201d she says. \u201cBut all of a sudden I hear Transilvanian Hunger. It reminded me of classical music.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Starter Pack\u201d is how she jokingly describes Transilvanian Hunger today. \u201cIf you like that, a lot other black metal sounds really pleasant. A lot easier on the ear.\u201d<\/p>\n MYRKUR – Ella (Official Audio) – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n When she was 22 years old, Amalie Bruun bought herself a one-way plane ticket to New York and started another life. It was the city\u2019s rich and romantic musical history that drew her there: the poets, the punks, the freaks, the superstars. She found a place to stay with friends of friends from back in Denmark, and walked all over the city, giving her demo CD to venues. \u201cJust piano music,\u201d is how she describes what she was doing. \u201cMe singing little melodies.\u201d<\/p>\n She played anywhere that would have her, in front of whatever crowds were there. \u201cOh, it wasn\u2019t the cool people,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was definitely uncool. But it was never about fame. I just wanted to go out and earn my stripes a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n I hate the whole hipster thing<\/p>\n In the early 2010s, she met guitarist and co-vocalist Brian Harding, and they put together Ex Cops. Based in oh-so-trendy Brooklyn and playing shoegaze-inflected alt-pop, they basically screamed \u2018hipster\u2019.<\/p>\n She recoils at the suggestion. \u201cI fucking hate that,\u201d she says vehemently. \u201cI hate the whole hipster thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Ex Cops were ultimately small fish in a big indie rock pond \u2013 their main claim to fame was that their second album was executive-produced by Smashing Pumpkins<\/a> major domo Billy Corgan. Amalie liked being in Ex Cops, but she liked the music industry a lot less. Or at least the part of it she where she found herself.<\/p>\n \u201cI would be in the studio, working on ideas I had written and people would say, \u2018Let\u2019s just let Amalie get it out of her system,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI was so offended by that. There were comments on what I would wear, whether or not I could have armpit hair in photos. It takes away your agency as a musician and as a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Myrkur on stage at Midgardsblot Festival in 2022 (Image credit: Per Ole Hagen\/Redferns via Getty)<\/p>\n There were two Amalie Bruuns while she was living in New York. Or rather, there was one living two separate lives.<\/p>\n There was one Amalie Bruun who was making music with Ex Cops and dipping her toes into the world of modelling \u2013 she appeared, raven-haired, in a Chanel advert directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese and, even more bizarrely, alongside 90s crooner Michael Bolton dressed as Forrest Gump in a video by spoof R\u2019n\u2019B group The Lonely Island (Bolton was dressed as Forrest Gump, not her).<\/p>\n Then there was Amalie Bruun the black metal fan. She mentioned her love of the genre in Ex Cops interviews, even if she sounded almost apologetic about it. \u201cI was,\u201d she concedes. \u201cPeople thought it was too weird.\u201d<\/p>\n Few people picked up on the references anyway, let alone knew that she was quietly working on a project of her own in the shadows: Myrkur.<\/p>\n She had been writing folk melodies on the violin for years. Gradually she added more and more metal elements. Once in a while she dared play it to other people.<\/p>\n Eventually word reached underground metal stronghold Relapse Records, who released her self-titled debut mini-album in 2014. Back then her identity was a mystery: she was as much apparition as musician. \u201cI wanted the music to speak for itself,\u201d she says of her anonymity, as if it\u2019s the most obvious thing ever.<\/p>\n But mysteries don\u2019t stay mysterious for long these days. When someone joined the dots and uncovered her other life as one half of a trendy Brooklyn indie-pop band, the keyboard warriors went into swivel-eyed overdrive. She was a fake. A poser. Worse, a woman \u2013 one who\u2019d dared gatecrash the testosterone-heavy sausage party that is the black metal scene.<\/p>\n Why am I being hated by people who don\u2019t know me at all?<\/p>\n \u201cI was blissfully unaware of it,\u201d she says of the negative attention she initially attracted. \u201cThen it was, like, \u2018Why am I being hated by people who don\u2019t know me at all? At least get to know me.\u2019\u201d She shrugs. \u201cIt didn\u2019t affect me much. I was there to play music, not fuck around with all that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n She has a theory: that people objected to the fact that she\u2019d worked with Kris \u2018Garm\u2019 Rygg, frontman with former black metal avant-gardists Ulver<\/a>. \u201cHonestly, what really pissed off a lot of people in the beginning was that I did work with some of the Scandinavian black metal artists that they look up to. I think that was very annoying and provocative to that crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n Not that she was a woman? She thinks carefully.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s the fact that I didn\u2019t follow the rules of how women in metal should behave. I\u2019m not the first woman in metal, I just did it a little bit more my own way.\u201d<\/p>\n Anyway, she says with a faint smile, she wasn\u2019t above a little button-pushing herself.<\/p>\n
\n![\"MYRKUR](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775656874_966_maxresdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Myrkur](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/aXXkQZzDq5f7roJT2GaVse.png\")
\n<\/p>\n
\n![\"MYRKUR](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775656877_897_maxresdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
She arrived with no cellphone and nowhere to stay. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what I was doing,\u201d she says. \u201cBut that\u2019s what New York is. You just go there and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Myrkur](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/MUMVQ9wwmt8svX98aNvD2P.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n
![\"Myrkur](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/zAzZHzWcBoXDnyUf9hTSd.png\")
\n<\/p>\n