Matt Heafy of Trivium and Ihsahn of Emperor have officially announced the completion of their new collaborative album, which stems from their project Ibaraki. The duo initially started the project under the name Mrityu but eventually changed their minds.

Ibaraki’s forthcoming release, which was mostly created during lockdown last year, will be their debut album. While there isn’t an exact release date or title for the album, it is suspected to drop mid-2022.

“During this (lockdown) I was able to finally finish my black metal record with Ihsahn from Emperor. He’s been producing and co-writing that with me for about 11 years, and it finally comes out in the middle of next year, which should be fun,” said Heafy during his appearance on The Jasta Show.

Heafy also announced that Nergal from Behometh would be featured on the album. “There isn’t really a band that writes about Japanese folklore or the Shinto gods and goddesses and fictitious stories of Japanese history. So I changed the band name to Ibaraki, which is actually Trivium’s mascot — an easter egg in there — and the entire project is Japanese-themed. The art, the lyrics, I’m actually singing in Japanese, Ishahn’s on the record, Nergal’s on the record.”

When discussing the name of his project with Ihsahn, Heafy elaborated on the meaning behind Mrityu, how it got its name and a little bit of culture from the derivative. “It used to be called Mrityu, which I got from Ashtanga yoga, it means the concept of life and death, same thing as the ouroboros, same thing as the Japanese Enso, the idea that life and death are always symbiotic with each other. I didn’t really know what to write about lyrically, and I was talking to Ihsahn because I’ve always loved Scandinavian mythology, Norse mythology, and Swedish mythology, I wish I could write about Thor and Jörmungandr, I love these stories.”

Heafy went on to discuss how it was brought to his attention that he is incredibly knowledgeable in his own history and culture, which allowed him to throughout tap into his Japanese ancestry. Heafy then realized that he should be writing about Japanese stories because of his history and because of the exclusivity of it.

Photo credit: Raymond Flotat