Mental Cruelty has released “Frost,” and apparently seasonal depression wasn’t quite metal enough without adding Ragnarök.
The new single arrives ahead of the band’s upcoming album, Echoes of a Forlorn Land, due October 23 through Century Media. Drawing from Norse mythology, “Frost” takes its inspiration from Fimbulvetr—the brutal winter said to precede Ragnarök, and builds an appropriately bleak landscape of darkness, isolation and a world slowly disappearing beneath the cold.
Musically, Mental Cruelty describes the track as a combination of plodding, mournful atmosphere and blackened heaviness, offering Rotting Christ and Wardruna as reference points. The band says the idea was to capture the feeling of trudging through a winter that lasts three years. So, essentially February, but with considerably better production.
That production comes courtesy of Jens Bogren, whose résumé includes work with Dimmu Borgir, Behemoth, Kreator, Amon Amarth and Opeth. Bogren produced, mixed and mastered Echoes of a Forlorn Land, which finds Mental Cruelty expanding on the extreme-metal foundation of Zwielicht with increasingly atmospheric and cinematic elements.
The visual side hasn’t been neglected either. The mask featured with “Frost” was handmade by the band with some assistance from a member’s partner, and Mental Cruelty is teasing the possibility that a fan could eventually take it home. Because nothing completes the living room quite like an artifact from the apocalypse.
Following the album’s October release, Mental Cruelty will take Echoes of a Forlorn Land across Europe in November and December on a headline run featuring Ov Sulfur, Extermination Dismemberment and additional support.
Winter is coming. Mental Cruelty just brought its own soundtrack.
Echoes of a Forlorn Land arrives October 23 via Century Media.
Information provided by Mental Cruelty’s publicity team.