Korean Metal Legends Blackhole Team Up With Pansori Master Bang Su-mi for Genre-Defying Album 'Goosebumps'

Blackhole, one of the defining bands in Korean heavy metal history, will release a collaborative mini album titled Goosebumps (소름) on September 10, the group's agency MKB announced on August 4. The album was made with Bang Su-mi, a celebrated myeongchang, a title given to master practitioners of Korean traditional vocal music.

The four-track record is built around three emotional themes drawn from Korean cultural tradition: han (a kind of collective grief or longing), jeolgae (loyalty and moral conviction), and hope. The production brings those themes together through layered heavy metal instrumentation and the resonant textures of gugak, the umbrella term for Korean traditional music.

Two pre-release singles will drop before the full album. The first, 'I E Momi Jukgo Jukeo' ('This Body Dies and Dies Again'), arrives August 6. It captures the desperate, defiant spirit of ordinary people marching to the battlefield against foreign invasion, a subject drawn from Korean history and rendered through both metal and traditional vocal force. The second single, 'Dalbit Arae Hollo Geotda' ('Walking Alone Under the Moonlight'), follows on August 29. That track is built around a conversation between the daegeum, a transverse bamboo flute with a characteristically mournful tone, and a heavily distorted electric guitar, the two instruments winding through each other in precise, intricate arrangement.

The full Goosebumps mini album will also include two additional tracks: 'Salm' ('Life') and 'Nokdukkot Pilttaee' ('When the Mung Bean Flower Blooms').

Blackhole has been active since the 1980s and occupies a foundational place in Korean rock history. The collaboration with Bang Su-mi represents a genuine meeting of two traditions that rarely share a stage, and the structural choices here, letting the daegeum and the guitar share lead roles rather than subordinating one to the other, suggest the arrangement was taken seriously on both sides.