Iskald release Curse of the Mind on 25 September through Dusktone, eight years after Innhøstinga. It is the sixth album and the first one built as a single piece, and Black Metal Promotion is streaming all of it before the date.
Four chapters, running into one another, each at a different stage of the same deterioration: isolation, then doubt, then collapse, then a thin hope and what it costs. The setting is Helheim, taken bleakly rather than heroically, and the Norse material is there to give the inside of a head somewhere to happen.
The melody the Norwegians have always worked with stays. What is new is the room around it: the forceful passages now have colder and wider ones next to them, which is what a record has to do if it wants to be heard end to end rather than track by track.
They signed to Dusktone at the beginning of this year. Coloured vinyl, black vinyl, a CD box and a CD.