Denmark

When bands insist on defining a whole new genre to describe the music they play it is often more adorably quirky than actually descriptive. However, when Bersærk claims to play heathen stoner rock it makes sense.

Bersærk’s debut album, “Mulm”, has a chill to it and seems like a backdrop to a place with howling winds and lurking wolves and heavily bearded men eating slabs of raw meat. It’s great, really, and decidedly Nordic.

And even if you don’t understand the Danish lyrics you will definitely understand the stories frontman Casper Roland Popp not so much sings but tells you. Dark, angry stories, that is.

♪♫ Listen: “Den blinde fører den blinde” + album stream

Bersærk on Facebook, Bandcamp, YouTube.

Danish trio Black Book Lodge’s sophomore effort, “Entering Another Measure”, is one of those albums that slowly grows on you – mainly because none of the six songs stands particularly out.

But when you you hear the album as a whole the downtuned mix of Mastodon and Queens Of The Stone Age influences really starts to work.

♪♫ Listen: “The Martyr” + album stream

Black Book Lodge on Facebook, Bandcamp.

In 2014 Blaue Blume impressed with their debut EP, “Beau & Lorette”, and their first full length, “Syzygy”, repeats the feat.

Here they offer ten dreamy art-rock love songs with beautiful highs in opening duo “Candy” and “Sky”, ballad “Tranquil Curtains”, first album single “Thinking Of Roxy”, and frontman and principal songwriter Jonas Smith’s remarkable vocal.

A beautiful debut.

♪♫ Listen: “Sky”

Blaue Blume on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, YouTube.

Decades after its birth in the 60s, acid rock is all the rage again in Denmark.

Among the new players on the mushroom field we find De Underjordiske, who are barely out of their teens but sound like they have been holed up in a rehearsal space since the mid-60s practicing like madmen.

“Ind I Flammerne” (“Into the flames”) is an extremely confident debut with high quality songwriting, great riffs and all the swagger and sneering vocals you could ask for.

♪♫ Listen: “Sultne Ulve” + album stream

De Underjordiske on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Soundcloud, www.

This is Frederik Valentin’s first album in his own name – he’s released several as and with Complicated Universal Cum, Rock Hard Power Spray, Vomit Supreme and many more.

It consists of just four, eight to nine minute ambient synth-meditations moving from night (Pt. 1) to day (Pt. 4) over Amager Strand, a seaside public park in Copenhagen, in the same musical sphere as Brian Eno’s “Thursday Afternoon” and “Music For Airports”.

Awesome and uncompromising.

♪♫ Listen: “Part 4” + album stream

F. Valentin on Facebook, Bandcamp.

It’s been six years since Homesick Hank’s last album, “Ghosts”, and the fairly long absence is explained with midlife crisis (plural apparently), depression, drink and divorce.

All of this – along with a natural Scandinavian penchant for melancholy – makes “Beautiful Life” for a rather gripping nordicana album.

♪♫ Listen: “Believe” (feat. Mary Gauthier) + album stream

Homesick Hank on Facebook, Bandcamp, www.

Danish producer and synth wizard Caspar Hesselager and Australian singer-songwriter Carl Coleman hide behind the moniker Palace Winter.

Their debut is a most excellent collection of songs comprising shoegaze, indierock, folk, electronica and bits in between, rounded by Coleman’s warm vocal. An impressive beginning indeed.

♪♫ Listen: “Menton”

Palace Winter on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, www.

On their second full length, Ring Them Bells playfully explore the noisier regions of rock while making sure pop is there to soothe and ease.

And it’s a combo that sits them nicely alongside fine representatives for the new Nordic noise wave.

If you dig alternative rock then you’ll probably dig this quite a bit.

♪♫ Listen: “Lose Yourself”

Ring Them Bells on Facebook, YouTube, www.

After two lauded EPs, Esben Svane returned with his first full-length as The Radar Post.

The eponymous debut is a personal account of the drunken consequences of fame as drummer with Danish pop-rock outfit A Friend In London and the struggle to kick the booze and find his pre-fame self set to an elegantly elaborate backdrop of folk ‘n indierock.

And it’s really great.

♪♫ Listen: “You Got My Back”

The Radar Post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube

Retro-rocking Copenhagen-based Virgin Suicide impresses with a self-titled debut album.

With just half an hour of indie shaped by the UK in the 60s and 80s, “Virgin Suicide” is flawless in style and rich on pop hooks.

♪♫ Listen: “Virgin Suicide”

Virgin Suicide on Facebook, Soundcloud, YouTube.