Madrugada: new single out and new album on the way
A mortal blow was dealt to Norway’s biggest whole-hearted rock band Madrugada (and to Norwegian music) when guitarist Robert Burås passed away this summer. Since then uncertainty has surrounded the future of the band and the fate of the album they had begun recording only a short time before Burås’ death has also been a matter of speculation.
Now the details are revealed: the eponymous, fifth full length album ‘Madrugada’ will be released on January 21st. It is based on tracks laid down with Burås during the first recording sessions, but Guitarists Alex Kloster-Jensen (of The Ricochets and Burås’ other band My Midnight Creeps) and Emil Nicolaisen (Of Serena Maneesh) have been brought in to complete the album, - in Burås spirit one may rest assured.
And his presence is clearly felt on the first single-release from the upcoming album. “Look away Lucifer”, for sale today (December 10th) and immediately A-listed on Norwegian national radio, is a brooding and unredeemed tune, more doubtful of any notion of deliverance than anything from the previous album “The kids are on high street.” It is more akin; one could say, to the roughly hewn, disenchanted, but probingly truthful agony of Burås’ music in My Midnight Creeps.
The track can be taken as an articulation of the nothingness that all things are at the mercy of, and perhaps of the inevitable: No clear word has transpired regarding the future of Madrugada, but this first track, along with certain phrases on the band’s blog (“We would like to thank all the people who have made this journey with us”), more than suggests that ‘Madrugada’ will indeed be the swan song of one of the most remarkable, uncompromising and beloved Norwegian bands ever.
Ten years after the band’s first EP, the January release of ‘Madrugada’, is bound to be a symbolic artistic utterance in more ways than one. The band’s official web-site does not hesitate to call it the band’s “best and most important” album. It is probably safe to predict that it will not go unnoticed.
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