Norway’s BORKNAGAR have been hard at work on their as-yet-untitled new album; however, they have decided to release the album early 2004. Here’s what drummer Asgeir Mickelson had to say regarding the album’s status:

“I’ve recorded all the acoustic drums. I still have to do some V-drums stuff on one of the two Lars [Nedland]-instrumentals (don’t know what to do yet…), and I’ll spend a couple of hours going through all the drum tracks fixing small errors (like when I hit the snare or a tom a little bit wrong I can replace it with a better take, or move the bass drums if they’re not dead on the snare). Lars has recorded all keyboards (very happy with the sounds!) and Hammond (different one than last time - even more organic sound), but still have to record the grand piano in Fagerborg studio. Andreas [Hedlund, a.ka. Vintersorg] is doing all his vocals next week (starting tomorrow). Øystein [Brun] recorded most of the rhythm tracks in April and will continue recording his endless amounts of guitars the same week as Andreas is doing the vocals. Tyr was supposed to record bass this week but had to postpone it to the second week in July due to not getting his new fretless bass in time.

“Other news is that we’ve chosen to release the album early next year. We have way too much material so we’ll probably save some songs for a Japanese release or something else. We still haven’t found a title for it, but it’s decided that I will - as usual - do the cover design + this time shoot the band pictures (the problem with being in front and behind the camera at the same time is solved with a remote control and then some hours with Photoshop…). Other reasons for releasing the album next year is that we need more time to find and record ’the snacks’. We want it to be better produced - more sound effects, more intros/outros, whatever… We have found a possible session guitarist to replace Jens [Ryland, who parted ways back in February], but still needs to learn him the songs before playing live. Looks like we will have to cancel the (only) two scheduled shows and come back stronger next year. Who knows, maybe it’s worth the wait…”