SHINING have released "North", a new single that collides industrial metal, distorted screams, punishing riffs and the band's unmistakable shrieking saxophone. The track is anchored by a distinctly Nordic saxophone riff cold enough to freeze the blood.
"'North' is a salute to the ice-cold North — its darkness, its harsh winters and the defiance of the people shaped by them," says SHINING founder Jørgen Munkeby. "At its core, it's a song about Northern perseverance and 'The Northern Way': that stubborn, self-reliant spirit that has driven SHINING from the beginning."
True to that spirit, the band handled the entire process themselves — writing, recording and mixing the song in their own studio before travelling to drummer Simen Sandnes's cabin in the Norwegian mountains to shoot the official video.
"North" landed one day before SHINING brought their "Blackjazz" show to Bloodstock Open Air in the U.K. on August 7. The band is currently at work on a new album, with more music promised soon.
Led by saxophonist, singer, composer and producer Jørgen Munkeby, SHINING began life as an acoustic jazz quartet and have spent two decades deliberately mutating into new shapes. That process reached its violent breakthrough with "Blackjazz", an explosive fusion of free jazz, blackened industrial metal and progressive extremity that established the Norwegians as a genuinely singular force in heavy music — one with no obvious antecedents and, nearly two decades on, still no real imitators.
The transformation continued through 2013's streamlined and confrontational "One One One", 2015's "International Blackjazz Society" and 2018's hook-driven rock reinvention "Animal". That album's title track has since passed 13 million streams on Spotify, and the record grew the band's monthly listenership tenfold.
In recent years SHINING have returned to "Blackjazz" through a run of selected anniversary performances, including a show in front of 15,000 people at France's Hellfest in 2024. The August 7, 2026 Bloodstock appearance extends that celebration — but "North" makes plain that the next chapter is already underway.
Source: blabbermouth.net