With About Nordic Folklore, Darkplace unveils a haunting and immersive album built around nine creatures from Nordic myth and oral tradition. Released digitally on March 6th, 2026 via Icons Creating Evil Art, the record marks a deepening of the project’s singular vision — where music, mythology, and atmosphere merge into a unified world of sound and shadow.

Each track inhabits its own presence, drawing from folklore that once explained fear, nature, and the unseen. Rather than retelling myths literally, Darkplace explores their emotional and psychological weight: paralysis, seduction, terror, longing, and transformation. The album unfolds like a series of nocturnal encounters, moving from suffocating stillness to hypnotic motion, from water spirits and forest beings to creatures that visit in dreams.

Musically, About Nordic Folklore expands on Darkplace’s darkwave and post-punk foundations while incorporating black metal elements, dark folk, ritualistic structures, bowed guitars, and organic textures. Electronics are used sparingly but purposefully, giving way at times to more ancient, almost baroque expressions. Influences can be traced to artists such as Ulver, Swans, Lunedi, Die Tödin and Horndal, and the album remains deeply rooted in its own Nordic atmosphere. 

Key Tracks & Themes
The album opens with Näcken, a dark and brooding introduction to the mythic world of the record, followed by Bäckahästen, where children’s laughter fades beneath the surface of dangerous waters. Bysen presents a fleeting, almost tender figure, while Bergakungen invokes the sovereign ruler of the mountains in a stark, declarative form.

Älvdans, the album’s third single, explores the myth of the sirens — beautiful and merciless beings said to dance on fog-covered meadows at night. To witness their dance is to risk losing oneself entirely.

“Älvdans moves further away from electronics and deeper into a folky, almost baroque darkwave expression. It’s hypnotic rather than aggressive, seductive rather than suffocating — its danger revealed slowly, through repetition and motion.”

In contrast, Maran, the second single, delves into one of the most intimate and unsettling figures in Nordic folklore: the Mare, a nocturnal spirit that visits sleepers, sits on their chest, steals breath, and twists dreams into nightmares.

“Maran explores what slips through keyholes and cracks. She terrorises the sleeping, riding the chest, creating paralysis and shortness of breath. I wanted the bass to be something you feel physically, just as Maran rides heavy on your chest.”

The album continues through Trolltyg and Huldra, before closing with Havsrå” a final return to the water — different, yet the same — leaving the listener suspended between myth and memory.

All music, lyrics, mixing, and mastering are handled by Darkplace, reinforcing the project’s deeply personal and self-contained nature.

About Darkplace
Darkplace is an anonymous music and art project operating at the intersection of sound, folklore, and visual storytelling. Treating each release as a holistic work rather than a collection of songs, Darkplace builds immersive worlds where myth, atmosphere, and psychological tension quietly intertwine. Previous releases explored imagined dystopian futures; About Nordic Folklore turns inward and backward, excavating ancient fears that still linger beneath the surface of modern life.
True to form, the identity behind Darkplace remains obscured — allowing the work itself to speak, breathe, and haunt without distraction.

LABEL CONTACT

Carl-Marcus Gidlöf
Head of the Snake
Icons Creating Evil Art
Råsundavägen 73, Solna
Sweden
cmg@icea.se