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Hailing from Galicia, Spain, Sangre de Muérdago is the best Galician Folk band you’ve never heard of. Now, Sangre de Muérdago is the only Galician Folk band you have heard of.

The group uses Galician lyrics and a litany of instruments used in the Galician tradition to reflect on nature, mysticism and other themes.

“O Abismo” is the first single from Sangre de Muérdago’s upcoming full-length, O Xardín, due September 12. Keep an eye out for the release of the album’s second single on August 8, and a third one a week before the album release. The Bad Penny is proud to exclusively premiere “O Abismo” and its accompanying video today.

The band is led by Pablo Caamiña Ursusson, who handled almost too many roles to count on O Xardín. In addition to providing vocals, he also played classical guitar, hurdy-gurdy, music box, pandero cuadrado de Peñaparda, bells, pandeireta, shaker, and steel string guitar.

And it doesn’t stop there. Ursusson also wrote all the music and lyrics for the album (save some intros and outros), handed the arrangements in conjunction with the band, and came up with the album concept and artistic direction.

Sangre de Muérdago recorded O Xardín in a mere four days in September 2024.

“We’re very excited about this album,” Ursusson exclusively told The Bad Penny. “We’ve played for so many years, made many albums, gone on many tours and performed so many concerts, yet we still feel like a kid getting his/her first skateboard.”

Along with Ursusson, the band also features Georg “Xurxo” Börner (nyckelharpa, voice, bells); Saúl Nogareda (cello, voice, bells); and Xoel López (clarinet, voice, pandero cuadrado de Peñaparda, bells).

Ursusson said in a statement: ” ‘O Abismo’ (‘The Abyss’) is a song about our–forgive the redundancy, inner abyss. That teacher we carry within us, so overwhelming at times and so understanding at others. Looking into that abyss can be an exercise in self-knowledge and awareness, yet the gaze we receive from the bottom of the abyss can be fierce and blinding.

“But it is a specular reflection. It reflects both our excesses and our shortcomings, our fears and our anger, our pride, our shame. The abyss is implacable, we cannot fool it, and it is for this very reason that we can turn it into the teacher we need, who educates us and makes us empathize with our surroundings.

“There is no better way to understand someone with a broken heart than to have been through it ourselves. There is no better way to understand the homeless person living in the streets than to have been through it. And there is no better way to understand the suffering of others than to know in our own skin what that suffering is. And so on and so forth.

“Our inner abyss gives a new dimension to our empathy. But no matter how much we try to surround the abyss, to spare ourselves the pain, to spare ourselves the self-shame, we have no choice but to face it so as not to be trapped by our egos, by our indifference.

“Remember that what we sow is what we reap.

“Also, empathy for others.”

Keep those enlightening, poetically stated words in mind as you glimpse this Bad Penny exclusive:

Much more about Sangre de Muérdago is yet to come, but in the meantime, check out its Bandcamp page to get better acquainted with the transcendental, transformational group.

This entry was posted on 07/10/2025 at 8:51 am and is filed under Exclusives with tags Exclusive Song Premiere: Sangre de Muérdago's 'O Abismo'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.