Album pick, April 2026

For my fourth album of the month, I am choosing Skamhan by (0).

Album cover

Yet another fairly obscure band that’s not easy to look up; (0) parenthesis 0 parenthesis .

The introduction to this album goes as follows:

In rousing dark euphoria, Danish progressive black metal enigma (0) lifts the veil for their debut album SkamHan, a lucid dream wrapped in growling dark melancholia.

I have to say that this introduction really sums the album up perfectly. It has the typical characteristics of a black metal album, yet it is not your typical black metal album. The tempo is fairly slow and calm, yet there is still quite a definite bite to the sound, a certain sharpness.

If this band has such a small online profile and is so hard to find, then how did I come across this band? It was a few years ago, I was browsing online for some vinyl records I wanted, and as usual I was browsing the “sale” section. It was the beginning of my collection and I am always curious to discover new music. In this “sale” section I came across their debut ep “(0)”, it was heavily discounted. There was something that attracted me about the cover art and I thought to myself “Eh, why not?”. It was a complete impulse buy, I didn’t know the band and I wasn’t able to find any information or previews of it online.

A week later when the records arrived and I put in on the player to have a listen. I was pleasantly surprised, it was my first “black metal” album. Definitely something different than I was used to at the time. But I still kept coming back and listening again and again. About a year later they released their first album, “Skamhan”, and I ordered it immediately.

This album is a bit calmer than their previous one, but it also has a certain aggressiveness to it. Throughout the aggressive riffs there is a certain note of melancholia. If you look up the lyrics (and translate them from Danish to English), they’re pretty harsh, but there’s still something hopeful in the words.

Especially the closing track of the album, “Alle Renses,” is a full melodic track that stands in stark contrast to the rest of the album. I won’t give away any more, because you just have to listen to it from start to finish!

For your convenience, the lyrics can be found here: https://0bandofficial.com/SkamHan_lyrics.pdf

My absolute favorite track is Rød Glorie

Edit: You should probably play the album a little louder for a better experience :wink: