Iskald have put Curse of the Mind up in full. The record has been out since 25 September through Dusktone, and streaming all of it at once is the right call for what it is.
It is their first concept album, four interconnected chapters tied together by ritual invocations, and it was built to be heard end to end rather than sampled. Each chapter sits at a different stage of the same descent.
The setting is Helheim, stripped bare, but the band are clear that the mythology is a frame rather than a subject. The story is psychological: isolation, doubt, collapse, a thin hope and then sacrifice. Helheim, as they put it, is the shape the darkness inside takes.
It was recorded in the summer of 2025 at Strand Studio in Beiarn, mixed and mastered by Hallstein Sandvin, with a sleeve by SG7 Graphics. They are a five piece now and have been one of the steadier names in Norwegian melodic black metal for twenty years.