The second album has arrived for Lysbaerer.

Created in Denmark, the project revolves around guitarist/vocalist Thomas Mascagni (Sunless Dawn) and guitarist Jamie de la Sencerie, both former members of Lamentari, which they left in 2024. Their first album was released that same year, and it took two years for them to release Trolddom, their second album, in collaboration with Vinyltroll Records.

They are accompanied live by Michael Møller (guitar, Lamentari, Mother of All, Sunless Dawn), Kristoffer (bass, Lastera), and Nikolaj (drums, Cold Night For Alligators).

The album slowly and gently begins with En afsked, a progressive introduction that allows us to admire the beauty of the duo’s harmonics accompanied by percussion that intensifies and then stops to let I Månens Blanke Skær set the stage on fire, unveiling a veil of ethereal saturation before visceral screams arise from the layers of darkness that surround us. The mix is simply striking, each element contributing to piercing our soul while following the flow that rages between two moments of saving calm, but there are also rougher passages that contrast with the airy swirls found on Med Formløs Væren, with which the duo tempers and softens our spirit with vaporous tones. The keyboards are eventually replaced by guitars, bass, and drums, but retain their simplicity before finally accelerating to lead into Forsonet Gennem Røgens Slør, which immediately reinforces the darkness, first mingling with the wave of sound and then coloring it entirely to make it aggressive and temporarily make us forget the rest, which will nevertheless return to the fore during an unsettling but minimalist break. Of course, it doesn’t last and completely surrenders to the violence that the band wields to perfection, even offering icy tones to the slowest passages before a vocal sample tempers the atmosphere and lets us join Fra Aske Til Intet, which starts off melancholic but easily allows itself to be corrupted, allowing the vocalist to anchor himself even more in penetrating DSBM influences while the catchy instrumental crashes down on us with aggression, led by a brutal blast that sets the tone for this last track which, despite a lull, comes back to hit us even harder until its final heart-wrenching moments where the screams are lost in this increasingly desperate web.

The Danish scene has always been confidential when it comes to Black Metal, but many gems are born there, such as Lysbaerer. The bans is only two years old, Trolddom has everything it takes to be a future classic of melancholy, the kind that rages deep in your guts and clouds your eyes forever.

95/100

Version Française ?

A few questions to Thomas Mascagni, vocalist and guitarist for the Danish Atmospheric/Post-Black Metal duo Lysbaerer, about the release of their second album, Trolddom.

Hello and first of all, thank you very much for your time! Tough one to begin, how would you describe Lysbaerer’s music without using the words “Black Metal”, “Post-Black Metal” or any other subgenre?
Thomas Mascagni (vocals/guitar): Hello, thanks for having us! Lysbaerer‘s music originates from inner feelings about depression, being inadequate and distressed. The music we create is an extension of our own raw feelings. So the music is for anyone who knows what it feels like to struggle.

Where does the name Lysbaerer come from, and how do you link it to the music you play?
Thomas: Lysbaerer is a Danish word for lightbearer (or maybe even lightbringer), and for us it symbolises a guiding light or light in a dark time, kind of like how a lighthouse would symbolise the end of a long journey at sea. At the same time it is also one of the names for Lucifer, which in some eyes was seen as a guide or a bringer of freedom. It’s a sort of double connotation.

Lysbaerer will release next month its second album Trolddom, how do you feel about it? Do you already have any feedback?
Thomas: We feel great about Trolddom! The record served as a palette cleanser for us. We’re currently creating a trilogy, so Trolddom started (and ended) as something completely different which was the purpose. We’ve received little to no feedback about Trolddom yet, but the little we’ve heard was positive! 

How would you sum Trolddom’s identity up in only three words?
Thomas: Aggressive, Dreamlike, Melancholic. 

How does the creation process happen within Lysbaerer? Did you notice some changes between now and the band’s first album? As both of you previously had experience with creating music in a full band, do you think it’s easier to work as a duo?
Thomas: First off, it’s a whole lot easier to create synergy between two people other than eg. five. This was also one of the reasons that Lysbaerer is a two-person project. Then we can remove a lot of bureaucracy from the process! Our process is that we sit at home, separately, and brainstorm a lot of ideas. We then create demos on the outcome of these ideas, and exchange them as they’re ready to be shown to each other. Then we’ll sit together – eg. we feel stuck or if we want feedback on the music we’ve created. We’ll then go through the whole thing, and brainstorm as a pair what we can improve or move around to make the both of us satisfied. Quite often, we have the same vision for a song or a sound, therefore we often don’t need to make big changes. This has, through time, been the go-to process for us. As a guy studying and as a dad with a full time job, we only have so much time – thus we need to spend our time creating music as optimized as possible, without forgetting ourselves in the process. 

Lysbaerer’s sound is obviously rooted to an airy and visceral melting of Black Metal, but which bands would you quote as your main influences? How do you manage to combine all your influences together to make them coherent?
Thomas: We have a lot of influences, and mostly different from each other. Jamie likes post-metal, Thomas likes DSBM – but of course we have some common inspiration. Among these some of the biggest would be Wiegedood, Woe Bather, Der Weg Einer Freiheit and Cult of Luna. These would possibly be our main and common influences. Then we have some personal inspirations we’ll bring into the mix once we write on our own – An example could be Spectral Wound for Jamie and Ellende for Thomas. 

What is your personal favorite song on Trolddom, or maybe the hardest one to achieve?
Thomas: We think fra aske til intet (“From ashes to nothingness”) is our favorite song. It’s a grand closer to the record, and we experimented with a lot of things on this song. Jamie takes lead vocals at the end of the song, and this was an eye opener for us. The dynamic totally changed, and we find it a great closer for Trolddom. We also work with a philosophy that the last song on the album should be the biggest / most grand, and we think we achieved that on this record. 

Where do you find your inspiration to create music and lyrics? Is there a concept on Trolddom?
Thomas: The inspiration for Trolddom is the Danish 15-16th hundred witch trials. The theme for the record is the inner thoughts of a person condemned to be a witch. From the loneliness of being by yourself as well as being an outcast from society. The only constant is the light of the moon (i månens blanke skær). The burning on the stake, the pain you feel as the flames engulf you and your soul/body searches for eden (forsonet gennem røgens slør) and at the end being reduced to ashes, carried away by the wind and slowly being forgotten (fra aske til intet). 

Do you think you improved yourself as a musician with this new record?
Thomas: We would say we improved a lot. We’ve felt a whole lot more ambitious about this release than we did on our first one. The first release was a “test” to see if people liked the music and where it would take us – we just released the album without any real plan thus, not

expecting anything. We’d receive a lot of positive comments in the local Metal community, and that made us more ambitious for this release. Even though we sought out to do a more simple and straightforward record, we ended up experimenting much more than we did previously, as the songwriting left much more space to explore the music further. We’ve added more synthesizers, samples and we even added choral arrangements to some parts – all done by ourselves. We both feel that the extra time we put into experimenting, the added elements and instruments really improved Trolddom and Lysbaerer could sound like. In addition, we participated in the Mono Goes Metal masterclass and showcase festival, which helped us better distribute different roles within the band, based on our individual strengths. Being a musician is more than just writing and playing music these days, this helped us immensely in creating more time for ourselves to just play and write music again. 

Trolddom is released in collaboration with Vinyltroll Records, how is the partnership going?
Thomas: The partnership is great – Manne is a great partner. We created a grand deal for us, which means that we’re able to fulfill a dream for us both – To actually have our music physically by having Vinyltroll create vinyls for us and making them special for us. We’ll release a smokey blue and a smokey pink vinyl, which fits with the whole artwork. It’s stunning! 

When looking at the internet (mainly the website setlist.fm and your social media accounts), I only found a few shows in Denmark, how were those shows going? Would you consider playing more shows in the future?
Thomas: The shows have been great! We’ve loved every bit of them. Some great standouts would be Copenhagen Metal Fest and Mono Goes Metal, which are both Danish local festivals in Copenhagen and Aarhus. We’d love to play more, and would love to play outside Denmark as well, and hopefully some of these bookings will come into fruition soon. To be honest, we also have to be pretty realistic about which shows we actually can play, as we both have fulltime commitments, that has to pay for everything surrounding the band, including transport, sleep arrangements, merchandise, SoMe ads etc. 

About live shows, how did you hire the three live musicians who play with you? Maybe you have some kind of habit before/after a concert?
Thomas: Yes, we have 3 live session members all consisting of good friends, and we do try to stick to the same 3 people at every show, so it’s consistent and we keep the chemistry we have on stage. We’re lucky to play with Michael, who we previously played with in Lamentari, who also plays for Mother of All. Nikolaj on drums is from Cold Night for Alligators. Kristoffer who previously played in the band Lastera, and lately has done a lot of live session work for Iotunn. We don’t have any set habits currently, but for us I think the most important part of a show is to have a good time together, and play the best show possible. That might include a bottle of soju, or maybe a diverse set of nasty alcoholic shots, but we don’t have anything set in stone as of yet, as our last couple of shows have been extremely busy. 

What will come next for Lysbaerer? About music, live, anything.
Thomas: So, for now it’s Trolddom and the shows around that. Once we’ve wrapped that up, we have a great bank of ideas for new music that we’ll have to look through and start the process for album II in the trilogy! 

Have you ever heard of the French Metal scene? Are there any bands you know and like?
Thomas: Alcest is definitely one of the early inspirations for Lysbaerer, and it really helped us get into the whole ambient Post-Black Metal sound, even though it’s much softer than what we’re personally writing. Other bands that also had some inspiration in some of the songwriting, even though they might be different genres are bands like Blut Aus Nord, Birds in Row and even Year of No Light. 

Are there any bands you would love to play with? I let you create your dream poster with Lysbaerer and three other bands, even unrealistic answers are accepted.
Thomas: Wiegedood, Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Cult of Luna, Lysbaerer.

Last and funny question: which dish would you compare Lysbaerer’s music with?
Thomas: A soggy lasagna. We’d all love the idea of it, but will all be depressed if it’s horrible – but it’s still lasagna!