Grim Aural Apocalypse

The Black Death is based on Svartedauen (1900) 

by 

Theodor Kittelsen (1857–1914) 

 

Composed 

by 

Lars Pedersen: 

programming, keyboards, harp, cello, percussion, sounds and voices
 

Recorded summer 1992

The album is a sound-journey of the great plague entering and ravishing Norway in 1349, killing two-thirds of the Norwegian population within a few years, reducing an already small population to a bare minimum of survivors. The album was inspired by a series of grim drawings on the subject by Theodor Kittelsen. Kittelsen is one of Norway's most renowned artists, with Svartedauen being his seminal work from the year 1900, a national treasure as instantly recognizable to most Norwegians as Munch's The Scream. Pedersen had the balls to make a soundtrack to it.

Svartedauen is a 38 minute musique concrète sound-collage. In a highly sophisticated manner it mixes elements of manipulated traditional Norwegian folk music (such as the eerie sounding Harding fiddle), with sounds of horses whining, rats gnawing, wood grinding and people moaning.

 But because Svartedauen tackles such a dark subject it is unlike any other musique concrète compositions I know. Pedersen masterly makes us feel the desperation of rural plague-ridden Norway - a sonic maelstrom slowly moving forward towards the inevitable apocalypse. A scary and uncomfortable, yet fascinating listen.

 The Black Death's release just happened to coincide with the Black Metal summer of 1992 and was thus embraced by a generation of young metal artists about to radically change the musical landscape of extreme metal forever. Listening to the album with that in mind it actually makes a lot of sense - Svartedauen incomparably evokes that feeling of doom and medieval dread that the black metal bands were attempting with croaked screams and distorted guitars around the same time.