Manes sounds like the internal monologue of a city at three in the morning. It is music that feels submerged and slightly oxygen-deprived, trading the traditional aggression of their black metal roots for a sophisticated, claustrophobic brand of electronic art rock. You will hear skeletal trip-hop beats, deep bass grooves, and guitars that function more as textural washes than riff-delivery systems. The vocals often drift through the mix like smoke, sometimes whispered and other times processed into ghostly echoes.
What makes them truly distinctive is their refusal to settle into a single identity. They occupy the 'post-everything' space where genre boundaries dissolve into a singular, moody atmosphere. While their early work was raw and frozen, their evolution into 'Vilosophe' and beyond introduced a strange, jazzy elegance. It is the sound of a band that grew bored with the forest and moved into the concrete labyrinth of the modern world, bringing their darkness with them but expressing it through synthesizers and glitchy percussion.
Start with 'Vilosophe' to experience the perfect pivot point between their metal past and their experimental future. It is an album that feels both inviting and deeply unsettling, offering hooks that are immediately catchy but structurally wrong in the best possible way. From there, move to 'How the World Came to an End' for a deeper dive into their electronic and hip-hop influenced noir-pop sensibilities.
Manes is a band from Trondheim, Norway, formed in 1993. They started out as a two-piece band composed of Sargatanas and Cernunnus (or Cern). They have been signed to Candlelight Records, Hammerheart Records and the Italian experimental label Code666. The band's earlier works, up to and including Under Ein Blodraud Maane (1999), were somewhat atypical Norwegian black metal and were highly lauded by fans of the genre. However, as of Vilosophe (2003) and How the World Came to an End (2007) the band completely changed its sound to a hybrid of jazz, trip hop, electronica and metal with clean sung vocals and many progressive overtones. In spite of being highly acclaimed by critics this subsequent change of direction alienated most of their original fan base. In 2011, the band released an official statement on their web site that they were calling it quits due to health and family reasons. They resurfaced the same year, changing name to Manii and returning to make black metal. Manii released Kollaps in 2013., Sinnets irrganger in 2018 and Innerst i mørket in 2023. Manes also returned (independently from Manii) as an electronical project in 2013 when they signed a deal with Debemur Morti Productions and following year, 2014, released their fourth album, Be All End All, as well as an LP re-release of the debut Under Ein Blodraud Maane and compilation album of obscurities and rare material called Teeth, Toes and other trinkets. In 2018, Manes announced their comeback with a new album, Slow Motion Death Sequence.
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