SLAGMAUR Reveal New Video Single ‘Hexen Herjer’

SLAGMAUR release lyric video single ‘Hexen Herjer‘
taken from forthcoming new album “Hulders Ritual“

SLAGMAUR unveil the lyricvideo ‘Hexen Herjer‘ (“Witch Raid”) as the next advance single taken from the forthcoming new album “Hulders Ritual“, which is chalked up for release on February 27, 2026.

Album details of “Hulders Ritual“and the background story behind’Hexen Herjer‘can be viewed below.

SLAGMAUR comment: “The ‘Eagle Abduction of Leka’ is one of Norway’s most famous folk legends”, General Gribbsphiiser explains. “According to the story, in 1932 a small child on the island of Leka was snatched by a white-tailed eagle and carried high into the mountains. After an intense search, the girl was found alive on a cliff ledge. Although the details remain disputed, this event has become a lasting part of Norwegian folklore and local history.”

The Eagle Raid

The event locally known as Ørnerovet (“Eagle Raid”) took place on the Island of Leka in 1932. Three-and-a-half-year-old Svanhild Hartvigsen had disappeared while playing. After an extensive search, she was found several hours later on an inaccessible mountain ledge on Hagafjellet. Since that time, the local community has maintained that a large sea eagle carried her there and set her down on the ledge – an account that quickly gained national attention and has been retold in newspapers and local histories ever since.

Physical traces of the incident remain preserved at the local museum. Svanhild’s dress and shawl are kept and exhibited. These objects have often been cited as evidence that supports the story. Marks found in the woollen shawl are locally interpreted as impressions from the eagle’s talons, which has served to reinforce the narrative’s hold on the community’s collective memory.

On the contrary, scientific communities and natural historians have long expressed deep scepticism. Ornithologists point out that a human child weighs far more than what a sea eagle can realistically lift in flight. Several expert voices describe the story as highly unlikely and they place it closer to folklore than natural science. Furthermore, there are no contemporary eyewitness accounts of an eagle flying off with the child. What remains are later narratives, newspaper reports, and oral tradition.

Still, the belief in an eagle carrying young Svanhild onto the mountain has proven remarkably resilient. In local imagination, the incident endures as a threshold moment in which the raw force of nature, human vulnerability, and the unexplainable converge. Later retellings through film, radio, and reportage have both amplified the details and introduced alternative explanations: For example that Svanhild may have climbed there herself and that the event represents a collective misinterpretation. This division persists. Some are left with an unease – did it really happen? – while others continue to refer to the place as Ørnerova, a name that renders the myth tangible.

Within Slagmaur’s universe, and within the context of “Hulders Ritual”, Ørnerovet on Leka fits perfectly. “Hulders Ritual” revolves around the theme of being taken – vanishing from familiar ground and being transported elsewhere, whether by forces of nature or by beings beyond human control. The story of Svanhild – the child who disappears and is later found on a mountain ledge, surrounded by rock, silence, and traces – is the very substance from which folklore grows. It unites documentary restraint with the stark, metaphorical power of being taken into the mountain.

In the context of the single ‘Hexen Herjer’, Ørnerovet functions both as a concrete historical event and as a symbol: here is the one who is taken, here is the mountain as a gateway, here is the carrying creature – and the question that never loosens its grip: who took her, and where was she truly brought?
General Gribbsphiiser

Lyric video credits
Video by Łukasz Jaszak
Lyrics by Blackthorn

For every genre, there comes a time when all seems said and done. Black metal has long reached this destination all too often resulting in decline, repetition, and nostalgia. Yet occasionally, along comes a band that rewrites the rules. On their fourth studio album “Hulders Ritual” (‘Ritual of the Fay’), SLAGMAUR achieve this extremely difficult feat.

Not just via the additional production by the ‘inventor’ of the ‘Norwegian black metal sound’: THORNS mastermind Snorre W. Ruch, SLAGMAUR are solidly building on the foundation of harsh Norwegian black metal with all the respect due the scene that they are a part of. Then again, mastermind General Gribbsphiiser does not stop there. Unafraid and with reckless abandon, he mutates and warps the traditional formula with a host of subtle innovations and tweaks of the classic sound.

Every aspect of SLAGMAUR reflects the larger than life and unapologetic approach to the art of black metal of the band – live on stage, in the interaction with their die-hard followers and now fully unleashed also on “Hulders Ritual”. Although the album continues, refines, and widens the daring stylistic balance of SLAGMAUR’s previous works, it adds an extra dimension of sardonic mania to its collection of sharp and vicious sonic instruments. Choice guest-contributions that include TAAKE vocalist Hoest, DIMMU BORGIR guitarist Silenoz, and MISÞYRMING frontman D.G., who cover three decades of Nordic black metal make a case in point.

In everything that Gribbsphiiser is creating and releasing there is an aspect of total art that permeates the band and “Hulders Ritual”. The album’s name refers to a female spirit or fay being that is common in Nordic folklore. Mostly associated with the forest the relationship of these seductive creatures with humans differs in local tradition and ranges from beneficial to outright evil: abducting and murdering men or replacing human children with their own misshapen get.

“Hulders Ritual” reflects these themes. When Gribbsphiiser and Snorre Ruch staged their much debated disappearance prior to the announcement of the album, this action was far from a simple media stunt but directly tied to the stories of abduction and disappearance caused by supernatural beings on “Hulders Ritual”. It also served as a reminder that the mechanics by which the orally transmitted folk tales, children’s rhymes, and local stories of old that inspire SLAGMAUR still work in the digital age – with the marked difference that the circulation happens radically faster and globally.

SLAGMAUR have never intended their lyrics as a simple retelling of old stuff, but rather as a defiant challenge of conventions or as unsettling and confrontational provocation. Gribbsphiiser occasionally assumes the role of a black jester, who dares to hold up a mirror to society and does not care, if generating a story that goes viral despite a plethora of deliberately planted clues and full of holes causes opposition.

SLAGMAUR hail from Brekstad on the Fosen peninsula in the Trøndelag region and are a part of the Trondheim-based ‘Nidrosian black metal movement’. Founder, composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist General Gribbsphiiser even participated formally in a bloody baptismal ceremony shared with scene-defining musicians.

Although Gribbsphiiser started the band as a solo project, he already recruited fellow musicians during the recording of his first demo, “Svin” (2006). SLAGMAUR’s black avant-garde debut album, “Skrekk Lich Kunstler” (2007), marked the premier instalment in the still-unfolding series, “The Art of Olderman”. The following studio albums “Von Rov Shelter” (2009) and “Thill Smitts Terror” (2017) continued this story arc.

“Hulders Ritual” is for those who are seeking musical darkness, magic, and the relentless breaking of limitations from black metal. SLAGMAUR push forward among the select few that are leading the way to the future of the genre.

Band: Slagmaur
Album title: Hulders Ritual
Style: Norwegian Black Metal
Release date: February 27, 2026
Label: Prophecy Productions
Review impact date: January 26, 2026

Line-up
General Gribbsphiiser – guitars
Dr. Von Hellreich – vocals
Mr. Unt Zilla – bass
Red Max – drums

Guest musicians
D.G. (MISÞYRMING) – vocals on ‘Huldergeist’ & ‘Rathkings’
Hoest (TAAKE) – vocals on ‘Huldergeist’
Maria Charlotte Lund – vocals on ‘Huldergeist’
Silenoz (DIMMU BORGIR) – vocals on ‘Rathkings’
Snorre W. Ruch (THORNS) – additional producer

Recording by Rune Krieghr Røstad at Nekk Brekk Studio, Fosen (NO)
Mix by Rune Krieghr Røstad at Nekk Brekk Studio, Fosen (NO)
Mastering by Stein Bratland at Skansen Lydstudio, Trondheim (NO)

Artwork by Rune Krieghr Røstad (Storeulv Foto)
Layout by Łukasz Jaszak

Links
www.facebook.com/slagmaurofficial
www.instagram.com/slagmaur_official

Shoplink
https://spkr.store/collections/slagmaur

Available formats
“Hulders Ritual” is available as Digipak CD, ltd. Gatefold splatter black & bloodred vinyl LP (400 copies), Gatefold black vinyl LP.