Icelandic/US Black Metal entity MARTRÖÐ was birthed in 2015 by a group of established artists wishing to see what emerges when singular wills become a shared vision. The first output from this collective – based around core members A.P. (SKÁPHE) and H.V. Lyngdal (WORMLUST) – was the acclaimed 2016 EP “Transmutation of Wounds“, a dark descent into layered and intense sound as a mirror of existential fracture.
After a long period of silence – MARTRÖÐ only “speak” when there is something of significance to share – a new iteration of the project now arises in 2025 to unveil their stunning first full-length, “Draumsýnir eldsins” (“Dream Visions of the Fire“).
The band comments:
“MARTRÖÐ remains what it has always been: a convergence of ideas and visions. While the outer circle has changed over the years, the two principal songwriters, A.P. and H.V., have remained constant, with the addition of Jack Blackburn, Magnús Halldór Pálsson, and a number of collaborators carrying the project’s essence forward. What ultimately defined “Draumsýnir eldsins” was time itself, not as a neutral container, but as an active force. The album emerged slowly, fragment by fragment, over nearly a decade. Its framing draws on the medieval tradition of the dream vision: the idea that through dreams we process what reason cannot grasp, and that within the surreal and fleeting there lies a higher truth.“
To propagate their ominous vision, MARTRÖÐ has entered a pact with Debemur Morti Productions to issue the entity’s debut full-length on December 12th. A foretaste of what’s to come will be revealed on October 23rd, accompanied by pre-orders.
Concerning “Draumsýnir eldsins“, MARTRÖÐ state:
“We are exploring the fragility of creation, thought experiments like the mortality of gods, and ultimately the dissolution of form, the waking nightmare. Our work is an exploration of collapse: angels constructed from broken remnants, divinity suspended in endless death, and reality revealed as a dream on the verge of vanishing. The darkness we try to channel is a portrait of being itself, a confrontation with nothingness until the dream ends.“
Follow the collective’s work on Facebook and Instagram.
MARTRÖÐ began in 2015 not as a band, but as an experiment in convergence. It was never about the individual, but about what emerges when singular wills dissolve into a shared vision. In this sense, MARTRÖÐ functions as both seed and symptom: the impulse that later unfolded into Mystískaos, but also a form of collective dreaming in its own right.
The first articulation of this came with the “Transmutation of Wounds” EP in 2016, a work that did not seek catharsis but rather confrontation, a descent into layered sound as a mirror of existential fracture. After this, MARTRÖÐ entered a long period of gestation. What now emerges years later is not a continuation but a transformation: the full-length “Draumsýnir eldsins“, a cycle of dream-visions where humanity dreams its own apocalypse, angels are stitched from remnants, divinity is suspended in endless death, and creation collapses as the dreamer stirs awake.
MARTRÖÐ has remained intentionally outside the categories of stage, permanence, or identity. It exists in the unwaking hours, in the liminal space where visions take form. Its essence is the alignment of forces that briefly converge to give voice to dissolution, not performance, but invocation; not continuity, but the persistence of a nightmare that survives only through its recording.
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