Location: Barcelona
Country: Spain
Genre: Gothic medieval folk
Full length: Carpe Noctem
Format: Digital, CD
Label: Independent
Release date: October 31, 2023
Since their 2003 EP “Nocturnal Dance of the Dragonfly,” Trobar de Morte has ingrained Celtic, medieval, and neofolk melodies with ancient myths and legends. Infused with healthy doses of darkwave and classical, and an existential essence of their native Barcelona, they offer enduring atmospheres and dark cinematic sensibilities both ghostly and exquisite.
Founded in 1999 by Lady Morte, Trobar de Morte is reputed to be her most ambitious project alongside her work with Ordo Funebris, Opus Eclypse and Mater Tenebrarum and her session work with Northland, Atrexial and Celtibeerian. Making full use of the modern and traditional instruments they compose with, and their tales of witchery, dark mythology and ancient tradition, their live performances include interpretive dance, ritual, ceremony and psychodrama.
Their latest full length “Carpe Noctem” immerses listeners as much as their shows immerse audiences. On the album, chills in the air surround an unseen, unconsecrated presence that had lurked in the shadows for eons, evoking timeless moments where past and future merge and then fade into obscurity. Replacing distinctions between genres is a unifying warmth buried within the cold, a solace that inspires you to remain rather than ensnare you in chaos. It is an untouched pocket in time and space, an immortal, dreamlike place calling to the deepest recesses of your subconscious.
Once those recesses are opened, a long-dormant pagan soul awakens, and you begin to see a part of the world they create within yourself. Only it’s not all a world of light, love and New Age sageness. An album with a title translated as “seize the night” does precisely that by celebrating the kind of witchcraft practiced after sunset, according to centuries-old folklore. Flying to isolated mountaintops on brooms or shapeshifting animals, feasting with demons, and conspiring with the devil to bring profound misfortune to the unsuspecting.
People in the medieval age had quite a vivid imagination, and the songs on “Carpe Noctem” seem at least partly designed to strike a few nerves with the very fears and superstitions historically leveled against Wiccans, witches, and pagans. These legends are accompanied by an invocation to darkness in Latin, a goth-metal sonnet to the underworld in Catalan, and odes to the infamous Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory, New Orleans voodoo practitioner Marie Laveau, and the mythological Algonquin cannibalistic colossus known as the Wendigo. Furthermore there are tales of Celtic fertility festivals and the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century.
Impassioned, suspenseful, picturesque and vivid, “Carpe Noctem” awakens a macrocosm of mystery and melancholy connecting centuries of lore and mysticism. –Dave Wolff
Lineup:
Lady Morte: Vocals, hurdy-gurdy, bouzouki, moraharpa, keyboards
Ealaeth: Guitar
Ondine: Violin
Luka: Drums, percussion
Track list:
1. Descensum
2. Incantation
3. Rubor Sanguinis
4. Bathory
5. Shapeshifter
6. Wendigo
7. The Gathering
8. Salem
9. Marie Laveau
10. Ghost
11. Imbolc
12. Black Oath
13. Through the Black Veil
