1349 is a Norwegian black metal band formed in Oslo in 1997, taking their name from the year the Black Death reached Norway. The quartet plays an uncompromising, speed-driven style of black metal indebted to the second-wave Norwegian tradition, releasing their debut Liberation in 2003 on Toten Musik and following it with Hellfire in 2005, which became one of the most ferociously performed black metal albums of that era. They have released eight studio albums in total, including The Infernal Pathway in 2019 and The Wolf and the King in 2024, maintaining a consistently raw and aggressive approach across their career.

Ásmegin is a folk, black, and Viking metal band from Jevnaker, Norway, formed in 1998, whose name translates from Old Norse as "Might of the Æsir." Their debut album Hin Vordende Sod & Sø (2003), released on Napalm Records, established them as one of the more ambitious acts in the Norse folk metal tradition, blending black metal aggression with traditional folk melodies, violin, and dual clean and harsh vocals. A second album, Arv, followed in 2008. Lyrics are composed primarily in Norwegian and Old Norse, rooting the band firmly in Scandinavian literary and mythological tradition.

Æolian is a melodic death metal band founded in Mallorca, Spain in 2016, featuring members with prior experience in the Balearic underground metal scene. Their debut album Silent Witness (2018) introduced an approach blending Gothenburg-influenced melodic death with threads of black metal and folk, and their follow-up The Negationist (2020) on Black Lion Records deepened that template while turning its lyrical focus entirely to environmental destruction and humanity's damage to the natural world. The band has drawn comparisons to Swedish melodic death progenitors while developing its own environmentally-conscious thematic identity. They signed to Black Lion Records ahead of The Negationist's release.