Norwegian black metal legends, Limbonic Art, have signed a multi-album deal with Kyrck Productions & Armour. The band will release their forthcoming ninth full-length via the label.
Limbonic Art comment: "It is with great pleasure that I can confirm my signing to Kyrck Productions & Armour", mastermind Vidar "Daemon" Jensen states. "Following two decades of friendship and collaborations, label founder Iannis Mantzoros kindly introduced me to the new owner Martin Koller from SPKR. Martin and his team have done an outstanding job on my upcoming new album. With such great backing, I am confident that this long-awaited offering will have a strong impact on the metal scene and maintain the legacy of Limbonic Art."
The collaboration between Limbonic Art and Kyrck Productions & Armour goes back a long way in time. True to its early mission statement to reissue ground-breaking works from genre-shaping bands, the label released the vinyl compilation Limbonic Art 1995 that contained the earliest recordings from the cassette demo Promo Rehearsal '95 in the year 2009. A year later, in 2010 and again on vinyl Limbonic Art 1996 combined the band's cassettes Rehearsal 1996 and Promotion Tape 1996. Tracks from both releases were also compiled on a CD entitled Limbonic Art 1995-199", which was released in 2009.
Those early tapes had captured the ear of Emperor guitarist Samoth aka Tomas Thormodsæter Haugen, who signed Limbonic Art to his label Nocturnal Art Productions in 1996. At the time, the band that was originally founded as a 4-piece in Sandefjord in the south of Norway had already been reduced to a duo that consisted of vocalist, guitarist and bass player Daemon alias Vidar Jensen and multi-instrumentalist and singer Morfeus aka Krister Dreyer.
In 1996, Limbonic Art released their regular album debut, Moon In The Scorpio. Their at the time unique combination of harsh Nordic black metal with cinematic elements inspired by romantic and classic orchestral music proved extremely influential in the following years. Despite their considerable success in the underground scene, the Norwegians began to reduce symphonic elements over time. The sophomore full-length In Abhorrence Dementia (1997) is also considered a classic recording of the band as well as the third album Epitome Of Illusions (1998), which contained new recordings of overhauled demo material.
Limbonic Art have always been an elusive creation that rarely appeared live, for example with a stunning performance at the Black Whitsun sub-festival of the doomed millennium year edition of the Wave Gotik Treffen (2000) in Leipzig, Germany. In the new century, the duo slowly began to drift apart. Daemon joined Samoth's band Zyklon for a while, and Morfeus began to focus on his own project Dimension F3H. In February 2003, Limbonic Art officially broke up.
However, Daemon and Morfeus reformed the band in 2006. With the latter soon out of the band again, Daemon continued on his own to release the albums Phantasmagoria (2010) and Spectre Abysm (2017) under the name Limbonic Art. Ending another long period of silence, the Norwegian cult act finally announce their ninth album to be released via Kyrck Productions & Armour this year!
(Photo - Sean Fulton)
