''My Angel'' is an EP and the debut release by

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

avant-garde metal band

Arcturus , - bgcolor="#FFFAFA" , Note (category: variability): , , H and K emission vary. Arcturus is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Boötes. With an apparent visual magnitude of −0.05, it is the third-brightest of the ...

. It was released on 7" vinyl on 8 July 1991, through the

record label A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produ ...

Putrifaction Records. The EP is notable for being one of the earliest releases to be labelled symphonic black metal.

Background

Arcturus's first work published on an actual record label, ''My Angel'' represents a halfway point between band leader

Steinar Sverd Johnsen Steinar Sverd Johnsen is a Norwegian keyboardist and composer, born 1972. Sverd plays keyboards and synthesizers in Arcturus and was also the main composer for the band. He formed the band with Jan Axel Blomberg (also known as Hellhammer) of Ma ...

's original project Mortem, a death metal band, and Arcturus's later symphonic black metal and avant-garde metal albums. Although symphonic metal and

black metal Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, a shrieking vocal style, heavily distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, raw (lo-fi) recording, unconventional song structures, and an emp ...

elements are evident throughout the EP, the overall style is gloomy, down-tempo death/doom metal with low, growled vocals by Mortem's vocalist Marius Vold. Although the songs are simplistic compared to Arcturus' later works, traces of what would become the band's signature style are evident. ''My Angel'' was released with three different cover colors: green, yellow and blue. It is unknown how much of each were printed, but 1100 copies of the EP were printed in total. Along with four other Norwegian bands this EP was later repackaged as the '' True Kings of Norway'' compilation in 2000 by Spikefarm Records

Style

Joel McIver, author of ''Extreme Metal II'', described the album as "a dark work focusing less on traditional black metal fury than on the ambient bombastics of the synths."

Track listing

# "My Angel" – 5:57 # "Morax" – 6:29

Personnel

; Arcturus * Marius Vold –

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

–

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

, keyboards *

Jan Axel Blomberg Jan Axel Blomberg (born 2 August 1969) is a Norwegian heavy metal drummer known professionally as Hellhammer. He is best known as the drummer of Mayhem, which he joined in 1988. In 1987 Blomberg formed the avant-garde black metal band Arcturus ...

(credited as "Hellhammer") – drums,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control Arcturus (band) albums 1991 EPs