In addition to fronting Svalbard (who released one of our favorite albums of 2020 with When I Die, Will It Get Better?), Serena Cherry also has a black metal solo project, Noctule, and she'll release her debut album Wretched Abyss on May 28 via Translation Loss Records (North America), Church Road Records (EU/UK), and Through Love Records (Germany). The album was written during lockdown in 2020, and it was inspired by the RPG computer game Skyrim. "I have always associated Skyrim with black metal," Serena says. "The snowy mountain settings, the morbid themes, the Norse mythology backbone – it just goes hand in hand for me."

The first single is the title track, a six-minute, tornadic blast of black metal that's just as distinct and powerful as Svalbard's atmospheric, metallic post-hardcore. "'Wretched Abyss' is a song about Hermaeus Mora — who is the daedric prince of fate, knowledge and memory in Skyrim," Serena told Revolver. ""He often appears in a Lovecraftian form of tentacles in the game, this imagery combined with his unsettling psychological questline is what inspired me to write this song."