Folk & World
Heilung released “Læknisgaldr” on 13 October, with a video, as the first single from “Sagas”, due on 11 December through Season of Mist. The album gathers previously unreleased recordings that Kai Uwe Faust, Maria Franz and Christopher Juul made with the games studio Ninja Theory for “Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II”, which came out on 21 May 2024.
“We see ‘Sagas’ as its own branch within Heilung’s musical universe,” the group say. “These recordings show a cinematic, immersive and environmental side of what we do and were shaped very specifically by our work with Ninja Theory and the world of ‘Hellblade’.”
The material outgrew the game. The three spent ten days crossing Iceland’s ice caves, rivers, waterfalls, beaches and volcanoes, and came home with far more music than the game could hold; “Læknisgaldr” is one of those pieces. “The first sound you hear was not made by anything from our reality,” they say. “During the recording process, somehow, while playing with real human bones and breath, we managed to capture a ghost in the studio.”
Faust describes the song as a healing charm, rooted in the early medieval belief that language is tied to the condition of the body: name an affliction and it becomes defined, contained and open to ritual.
The deluxe CD and vinyl editions add “Ambient”, eight further soundscapes recorded for the same game. It is the collective’s first new record since the live album “Lifa Iotungard”, from August 2024, and its first studio material since “Drif” (2022); they go into LAVA Studios this month to start the fourth studio album proper.
Text by Alba Puiggròs