In last month’s Black Market, I wrote a long essay about how metal bands catfish their fans — and how metal fans are especially apt to be catfished by bands — and I closed it out with a section on the new musical entity called Myrkur, whose self-titled debut EP is out next month via Relapse. As I said there, I like Myrkur’s music a lot, but I don’t like the degree to which her backstory feels, to me, like an act of catfishing. The backstory is this (verbatim from Myrkur’s press materials): “Hailing from Denmark, carrying a distinct sense of Nordic isolation, one-woman black metal project Myrkur combines the rawness of second wave black metal bands like Ulver and Darkthrone with a natural sonic, ethereal beauty.” That’s it — take from that what you will. After first writing about Myrkur — displaying equal parts skepticism and enthusiasm — I got a handful of private message from friends sharing with me some rumors about the artist in question, some of which I later confirmed. After some consternation, I finally decided it wasn’t my place to publicly identify an artist who didn’t want her identity publicly known, which makes it hard for me to write about Myrkur now: I still like the music, but at this point, I feel like the shadowy authorship is part of the story. So you’re left with this. Today, the second single from Myrkur was released; it’s called “Latvian Fegurð.” Along with the track, Myrkur also released a short video created for the project. In the video, Mykur is speaking … Danish, I guess (with English subtitles), which theoretically backs up the whole “hailing from Denmark” thing. Myrkur’s face is obscured enough to make it impossible to tell if the woman in the video is the same person as the woman on the album cover or if that’s BS. In any case, you should (1) listen to the record because it’s great, (2) watch the video because it’s pretty cool, and (3) accept my apology for writing this half-assed stuff because I’m backed into a corner and I’d rather cover the music than ignore it.

Myrkur is out 9/16 via Relapse.