Tusmørke - Hestehoven (2023) [Hi-Res]

Norway’s most far-out and unique prog band TUSMØRKE is back! This album is not for the faint of heart. Like some great Babylonian harlot, the sinfully sweet sounds held within this record will deny no one, but they extract a great price! There will be no turning back should you proceed on this wretched path and cut your way through the thickets so green, for the path is fraught with danger and temptation. Proceed and you might find yourself sucked off, as it were, to a strange fairyland where every bush and clearing is gushingly alive with the brazen bacchanals of satyrs and nymphs. Continue and you will find yourself in a world where chance encounters of mildew-encrusted adult magazines, carefully stashed away in the shrubs are nothing short of erotic mysteries reminiscent of ancient fertility cults.

Life is never just sunshine and rainbows, and the same is true with Tusmørke, whose name means twilight in Norwegian. Like its namesake flower, the coltsfoot, Hestehoven swells forth from the underworld, and this chthonic aspect is heavily present in the conceptual undertones as well.. Tusmørke may conceivably be heathens, but certainly not unenlightened ones. This is music to hum along with as you pass a devil’s pact through the keyhole of your local church, or rock out to as you ride backwards on a dog all the way to the witches’ sabbath. Where warlocks cackle and witches blush. Where the priest, knowing-more-than-his-Lord’s-Prayer, binds Old Eric to his bidding. This is true Norwegian finger-clicking, butt-swinging prog rock. No more, no less – but cerebral in excess! Spring has sprung! If it is all too much to bear, close your eyes and think about the flowers. Hail Pan!