Amalie Bruun, a 32-year-old classically trained musician from Copenhagen and the one-woman force behind Myrkur, says it’s challenging being a female artist in “black metal,” a music genre that is both male-dominated and widely misunderstood.

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Critics of the music — an extreme form of heavy metal that features shrieking, fast tempos and distorted guitars — think it’s “just about Satan” or “a little bit idiotic,” says Bruun.

From 'This singer is making black metal into art' - [ Ссылка ]

“It’s not seen at the artistic level of other musical genres, but anyone who plays it can tell you otherwise because it’s extremely hard,” she says.

Bruun compares the guitar work of black metal to violin players in a classical orchestra, and says she gravitates to it because there is beauty in the rawness and harshness of the sound. Myrkur means “darkness” in Icelandic.

“Beauty isn’t pretty, beauty hits you in the face, beauty is like nature — it’s just brutal,” she says.

Despite her defense of the genre, Bruun herself is under attack from black metal devotees — mostly American men — who base their hate around her gender.

She has received death threats and hate videos and has been the subject of hit job pieces claiming she is ruining black metal.

“Am I really that powerful? Can I ruin a whole genre? I don’t think so,” she says with a laugh.

While the bulk of the criticism is easy for her to shrug off, there are times she worries for her safety.

“I’ve had some instances where people in their threats, they name and mention people that I know, people around me,” she says. “You actually worry are they able to get within a physical distance of you.”

Bruun doubts she would get the same volume of threats if she were a man.

“It seems to be a very witch-hunt kind of thing when women try to do something,” she says. “They don’t want you in there, you know, playing with their toys.”

Bruun has no intention of backing down and wants to show audiences that art is very much a part of black metal — regardless of the gender of the singer.

Her new album, “Mareridt,” is now out on Relapse Records.

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