In Harmonia Universali is the fourth full-length album by Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 avant-garde metal band Solefald

Solefald

Solefald is a Norwegian avant-garde metal/black metal band that was formed by members Lars Are "Lazare" Nedland and Cornelius Jakhelln in August 1995, with Lars singing and playing keyboard/synthesizer/piano and drums, and Cornelius singing and playing guitar and bass. The meaning of the band's...

, and their last under the Century Media label. It was released on March 24, 2003. The album featured lyrics sung in four languages, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, and German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

.

At the time, this can be considered the band's darkest and most ambitious work. Scathing black metal is interspersed with free-range jazz pieces and electronic dissonance. Clean singing and gravel-voiced narration work roam free amongst the combination of grinding guitars with Hammond organ and piano interludes, with occasional saxophone lines appearing from time to time to keep the experimental element Solefald is known for intact.

Cornelius (the band's chief lyricist) had stated on the band website that much of the lyrics have Satanic undertones, and that it wasn't a coincidence; he believes that part of the formation of what metal is today is due to evil and the rhetorical figure of Satan, who in turn is praised on the song "Red Music Diabolos", claiming "our crazy music has to come from somewhere."

In the album's booklet, the songs "Red Music Diabolos" and "Dionysify this Night of Spring" are listed incorrectly, "Diabolos" as track 5 and "Dionysify" as track six when it is vice versa.

Concept

Ten songs, ten wheels of time

To be buried in the body,

Grave to the mind -

Chained to an infinite universe

Where night is the rule

Ten songs, tell pills

To make the known look unknown

And the ancient feel new -

Pills against the ageless ills

Ten songs, ten rites

To purify the spirit -

Demons talking hard

And demons talk soft:



First, Gebura, for justice

Second, Munin, for knowledge

Third, Munch

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...

, for creativity

Fourth, Epictetus

Epictetus

Epictetus was a Greek sage and Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia , and lived in Rome until banishment when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece where he lived the rest of his life. His teachings were noted down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses...

, for virtue

Then Dionysos, for pleasure -

Sixth, Diabolos

Satan

Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...

, for music

Seventh, the Virgin, for fertility

Eighth, the Prophet

Prophet

In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...

, for charity

Ninth, Odin

Odin

Odin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....

, for protection

Last, for light, the sungod Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

n



Ten songs, ten stories of

Extreme music science -

Solefald proceed to play



In Harmonia Universali

Track listing

1. "Nutrisco et Extinguo" – 7:11
2. "Mont Blanc Providence Crow" – 5:16
3. "Christiania (Edvard Munch Commemoration)" – 8:20
4. "Epictetus & Irreversibility" – 5:58
5. "Dionysify This Night of Spring" – 8:12
6. "Red Music Diabolos (Instrumental)" – 4:34
7. "Buy My Sperm" – 4:35
8. "Fraternité de la Grande Lumière" – 5:12
9. "The Liberation of Destiny" – 6:28
10. "Sonnenuntergang im Weltraum" – 4:32

Credits

• Lazare
  Lars Nedland
  Lars Are Nedland , known also as Lazare, from Kristiansand, Norway, is the vocalist, drummer and keyboardist for acclaimed avant-garde black metal band Solefald. He is also keyboardist for the progressive black metal act Borknagar...
  
   (Borknagar
  Borknagar
  Borknagar is a progressive black metal band from Bergen, Norway, founded in 1995 by Øystein Garnes Brun. The band's style combines folk metal and black metal with progressive and melodic elements...
  
  , Age Of Silence
  Age Of Silence
  Age of Silence is a Norwegian avant-garde progressive metal band formed in 2004 by Andy Winter of Winds.-Current members:* Lars Are "Lazare" Nedland - Vocals...
  
  , Ásmegin
  Ásmegin
  Ásmegin is a Norwegian folk/viking metal band formed in 1998. The name comes from Old Norse and means "by the might of the gods". Ásmegin's lyrics are written in Norwegian as well as some in Old Norse and older Norwegian...
  
  ) - Apollonian harmonic sounds produced by the vocal folds and resonated by the cavities of head and throat. Instrument in which the sound and resources of the pipe organ are approximated by means of electronic services. Musical instrument having steel wire strings that sound when struck by felt-covered hammers operated from a keyboard. Percussion instruments consisting of hollow cylinders with drum heads stretched over one or both ends that are beaten with sticks
  Drum
  The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
  
  .
• Cornelius
  Cornelius Jakhelln
  Cornelius Jakhelln , also known as Cornelius von Jackhelln, is a Norwegian vocalist, guitarist, musician, writer and poet.-Musician:...
  
   (Sturmgeist
  Sturmgeist
  Sturmgeist is an experimental black/thrash metal formed by Cornelius Jakhelln in 2002.-Beginnings:In 2002, Cornelius Jakhelln began working on a new band. The name chosen was Sturmgeist . The music was an experimental mix of black/thrash metal with lyrics sung in English, Norwegian, and German...
  
  ) - Dionysian bardic sounds produced by the vocal folds and resonated by the cavities of head and throat. Flat-bodied electric instrument with a long fretted neck and six strings plucked with a pick
  Electric guitar
  An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
  
  . Flat-bodied acoustic instrument with a long fretted neck and six strings plucked with the fingers
  Classical guitar
  The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
  
  . Flat-bodied electric instrument with a long fretted neck and four strings plucked with a pick
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  . Single sound items cut from larger sample space
  Sampling (music)
  In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
  
  .

All lyrics and verse written by Cornelius.

Session musicians

• Saxophone on songs I, V & VIII: Kjetil Selvik
• Choir on songs III & V: Kristian Krüger, Kjetil Selvik and Sigurd Høye