Årabrot

Hailing from Norway, the shape-shifting noise rock outfit Årabrot crafts an incendiary mix of avant-garde black metal, experimental rock, post-punk, and doom/sludge metal that calls to mind such disparate acts as Big Black, the Melvins, Faith No More, Swans, and the Birthday Party. The band came together in 2001 and took its name from a refuse site in the members’ hometown of Haugesund; guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist Kjetil Nernes serves as its creative anchor, while electronic noise artist Stian Skagen supplies extensive input alongside producers Billy Anderson, Steve Albini, and Emil Nikolaisen. Under the alias Nernes/Skagen the pair has already issued two EPs and two LPs. Three earlier albums appeared on Norway Rat Records, among them the Albini-engineered Brother Seed, which received a Grammy nomination; a contract with Fysisk Format followed in 2009 and yielded the I Rove EP. Two further well-received long-players arrived in quick succession—Revenge in 2010 and Solar Anus in 2011—the latter earning Årabrot a Norwegian Grammy in the metal category. The self-titled Årabrot surfaced in 2013, succeeded by the EP trilogy Murder as Art, Modi, and You Bunch of Idiots. Shortly after the first of those EPs, Nernes learned he had malignant throat cancer; despite undergoing an aggressive six-week course of treatment he kept touring and recording, resulting in the 2016 full-length Gospel. In early 2018 the band issued the limited 12-inch Sinnerman to herald another album expected later that year.