As we continue our exploration of this subgenre I ask you to bear with me and cut me some slack. Some bands here may, possibly, not quite be Viking Metal (Amon Amarth were mentioned, even though they come up on Wiki's list) but as I'm not 100% certain what makes a pure Viking Metal band, I'm trying to choose examples who typify the Viking ethic in their lyrics more than the actual style of music, though if I can get both then great. I'm hoping I've chosen good examples here but if not don't hold it against me: I'm just now learning about this subgenre so I may make some dumb mistakes. With that in mind, let's press on.
Another band who are said to have been big on the Viking Metal scene, and who also evolved out of Black Metal beginnings, coming out of the wilds of Finland and so therefore conforming to our more or less formulaic geo-specifics, have at the time of writing eleven albums. I know I looked into Bathory in detail, and perhaps I should really do the same here, but as time marches on and Metal Month II heads into its second half, I want to be able to look at a few more bands, so will just grab one album from each. That may be a challenge, as I have no way of knowing if the one I pick for a specific band is typical of their output or indeed even their best Viking Metal album, but I'm going to do some research and see what I can manage.
Anyway, the first one I want to look at here is
As I said, they began as a Black Metal band so I think I can discount their first few albums, and try to see where the change began. Okay, this is not as easy as it seemed it would be. Apparently, right from their debut album Enslaved seem to have had Viking Metal influences, but each album up to the fourth is said to have heavy Black Metal leanings. Even the one where they're said to have shifted towards Viking Metal is still described as a “violent black metal” album. So, whether I'm correct or not, I'm going for this one, the fifth in their discography and the one on which apparently they began to bring in progressive metal sounds. It is, however, like all their early albums, sung in Finnish, though I have translations for the titles of the songs, and they all look pretty Viking material to me.
Mardraum - Beyond the within --- Enslaved --- 2000 (Osmose)
Now what exactly is “beyond the within” I can only imagine, but I see that
EM have been kind enough to provide translations of the lyrics too, so I should be able to follow the storylines, even if I can't (as I somehow expect will be the case) understand the singer. The expected thunderstorm rages as a lone guitar sings softly, and I note this opener is over ten minutes long, so there's a little trepidation here. The soft guitar punches up as the percussion blasts in, and the tempo is slow and stately as we begin "Større enn tid – tyngre enn natt" which seems to translate to “Larger than time, heavier than night”. It does descend into something of a fast, hard, black metal groove for a short moment then comes back with more progressive guitar, the tempo picking up and we're now three minutes in and there hasn't been a sniff of a vocal. I've seen long instrumentals before, but I doubt this album would start off with a ten-minute one. Also, I see there are lyrics. So as we move into the fourth minute I'm surprised that there is still no singing?
Ah, and now it comes in, a sort of vocal harmony before vocalist Grutle Kjellson screams the main part, and it's quite black metal and completely indecipherable, as I more or less feared, but the music is powerful and dramatic and very good. The lyric, though I can read it, I don't understand, but it may be the words of Death when Kjellson roars
”Days ended, and the stars died/ Before the wanderers reached home/ But I knew the way.” Now it breaks into a mad speedfest that would make Slayer envious, and the vocal, never understandable anyway, gets totally lost as Kjellson sings rapid-fire. And then it slows down and the last minute is driven by a soft guitar tone and no percussion, till Kjellson roars again and it ends on a heavy guitar. “"Daudningekvida" (Deadhymn) is much shorter and faster, powering along on a real speed guitar with some really excellent solos from Ivar Bjørnson and then things slow down in a serious doom metal vibe for “Inngang-Flukt “ (Entrance-escape)” as the kind of keening vocal harmonies return for the first time since the opener.
This song, though almost eight minutes long, has only eight lines of lyric, two verses, and seems to concern someone trapped in limbo. Very Conan, I must say. It kicks up then in the third minute, though nothing like the previous track. Cool phased guitar from Richard Kronheim joins that of Bjørnson as they take over the track until it all falls back in the fifth minute with a single acoustic guitar melody. Heavy vocals then come in with what I guess is the second verse, and the drums, courtesy of our old friend Dirge Rep from Gehenna. Oddly enough, this seems to be the only song on the album sung in English, and hence the English title actually appears in the tracklisting. How strange! Some great work on the guitar there by the two lads, then it ends on those sad vocal harmonies, taking us into "Ormgard" (the hive), with a strangely mono sounding guitar, almost as if it's only coming out of one speaker or is very far away. This goes on for about a minute before the song explodes into life, and is another fast rocker with growled screamed vocals from our friend Kjelsson.
This appears to be a standard rant by the Vikings against their sworn enemies, the Christians, as Kjlellson bellows
”Only the slave owns his own freedom/ When kings follow the laws of christened men “ while the next track, “Æges draum” seems to relate a dream which foretells Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, as the Norn warns “[/i]"everything will die and decay /Silence will once again prevail" [/i] It's another heads-down fretfest with Kjellson not only bellowing his head off but going into an even deeper register so that we get those dark beast, “Cookie Monster” vocals. There's a reflective dark crunching passage in the middle which then gives way to again acoustic guitar, completely unaccompanied, before it all hammers on again, this time with echoing choral vocals. The title track is up next, and it's quite short, just over three and a half minutes, and has even less lyrics than "Entrance-Escape" , with only three lines. Its literal tranlation being “nightmare”, you'd expect maybe a black metal-inspired roarfest, but it's actually more thrash with a marching guitar and of course very little in the way of vocals.
"Det endelege riket" (the finite empire) sneers with disdain at man's attempts to make himself immortal by creating empires, all of which must eventually fall. It flies along on Dirge Rep's galloping drums and the twin guitar attack, actually has a great melody when it gets going, very catchy, almost blues/boogie. Yeah. "Ormgard II: Kvalt i kysk høgsong" (The hive II: Strangled by purity) just lashes along, with much attendant screaming from Kjelsson, and your guess is as good as mine as to what it's about. However it would seem that in "Krigaren eg ikkje kjende" (Warrior Unknown) a warrior meets Death, but does not recognise him, and being unable to slay him is left standing at the banks of the river he must cross into the afterworld. Here, again, Viking myth gets a little mixed up with Greek, as the Norsemen believed, as we have already noted, that their souls were taken by Valkyries from the battlefield up to Valhalla. It was the
Greeks who held that Charon the boatman of the dead (surely the figure referred to here, unless it's supposed to be Odin) took your soul across the river Styx to Hades the Underworld.
"Stjerneheimen" (Starhome) rattles along at a fine pace, the lyric of which seems to be an homage to Ikea ---
”I hail the living room with pride “ 
, a driving beat that takes us to the closer, the only instrumental on the album, and the shortest track. "Frøyas smykke" (Freya's Necklace) runs for less than two minutes, with a big, dramatic finale on guitar and drums, a kind of triumphant warrior's march which brings the album to a close, though I'm disappointed at the sort of weak fade-out at the end.
TRACKLISTING
1. Større enn tid – tyngre enn natt
2. Daudningekvida
3. Entrance-Escape
4. Ormgard
5. Æges draum
6. Mardraum
7. Det endelege riket
8. Ormgard II: Kvalt i kysk høgsong
9. Krigaren eg ikkje kjende
10. Stjerneheimen
11. Frøyas smykke
I'm going to hold off commenting on any of these albums until I've completed this section. Next I want to look at a band who have, by their own admission, no real subgenre. As they say themselves,
“Týr's musical mission is to break down the walls that are erected between all the kinds of metal that have arisen over the years. Power-, doom-, black-, progressive-, gothic-, Viking-, folk-, ethnic- and epic metal. Walls and labels do nothing but fill people with prejudice.” (Quoted from Wiki article
Týr (band) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). However for our purposes here they fit right into the Viking Metal slot, and have certainly been listed in some “top Viking Metal bands” lists I've read, so let's look into the music of
Stylised as Týr , they hail from the Faroe Islands, and I have reviewed one of their albums already. They usually sing in their native Faroese, but this, their fifth album, is bilingual (?) and though I had intended to review “Ragnarok”, their third, which would have fit in perfectly with this section, I see with some disappointment and the rapidly-disintegrating memory of a man over fifty years old (!) that I already reviewed that, so instead we're going for this one.
By the light of the northern star --- Týr --- 2009 (Napalm Records)
As their name is so short and only has the one accent, and as I'm likely to be using it a lot in this review I'm going to just write it as “Tyr”. I like normally to give the proper spelling of any foreign band, but it seems pointless to keep copy/pasting just for one little accent, so any fans of the band, I hope you'll understand. “Hold the heathen hammer high” (love that alliteration!) gets us going with strong guitar and drums, picking up pace shortly as it hammers (sorry) along, Heri Joensen a much more accessible singer to me. No deep animalistic growls, no high-pitched screams; in fact, this comes closer really to power metal, which I guess goes to strengthen Tyr's case that they can't be pigeonholed into one metal subgenre. This certainly isn't your typical Viking Metal album, nor indeed your average band who operate in that sphere.
Great fretwork from Terji Skibenæs, and even if the chorus doesn't quite scan properly, the delivery being a little too rapid-fire for me, it's a good strong opening. Tyr are however known to sing both in English and their native tongue, and for the tale of “Tróndur í Gøtu” they revert to Faroese, as with a traditional Faroe Islands melody which I have come to understand this band use quite a lot, they tell the story of one of the islands' greatest Viking heroes, the eponymous Tróndur. Despite the folk metal influences this is a rocking song, powering along nicely on the guitar lines and driven by the incessant drumwork of Kári Streymoy. “Into the storm” opens on fast guitar but quickly slows down (?) into a sort of doomy vibe as those folk metal tinges come back in. Sort of a choir-style vocal as the boys return to using English, pretty cool little fluid solo about halfway through from Skibenæs, and this song seems to be, rather in the same vein as Bathory's “One rode to Asa Bay”, about the coming of Christianity and the efforts of the Vikings to resist it. Joenson sings defiantly
”You may die on your feet or you live on your knees /When the raven is fed time will come for peace”
Another traditional hymn is sung
acapella to open “Northern gate”, perhaps oddly as the lyric is in English other than that. After the chant has been sung, the track warps into a real power metal-style monster, with rippling guitar solos and chugging frets, which between them and the Faroese opening lyric take the song past its halfway mark, where it slows down into an almost Queen vibe before ending as it began, on the
acapella chant. “Turið Torkilsdóttir “ sings of a powerful woman in Viking myth, and gallops along like an avenging army with a hint of Maiden in the guitars. Okay now I'm confused. I can see the track running is the one above, but it's quite clearly the next track, “By the sword in my hand”. That probably means, due to the Faroese that was in the lyric of the previous song that it was Turið Torkilsdóttir , and if so, then where is “Northern gate”? This must be investigated.
Okay, I don't know what the f
uck Spotify is at, but I can't get it to play “Northern gate”, so had to look for it on YouTube. It turns out to be a mid-paed rocker with a “Whoa-oh-oh-oh!” chorus and some sharp guitar, and it's definitely in English. Sorry about the confusion above; I did wonder why a song with an English title seemed to be sung in Faroese! Then again, with Tyr it seems you never quite know what they're going to do. Part of their mission to break down all those boundaries I guess.
Anyhoo, this track is as mentioned “By the sword in my hand”, with an almost hilariously camp lyric:
”By the sword in my hand/ I will conquer the land/ I will decimate and decapitate/ Those who question the sword!” Dear god.
The next track should be “Ride”, but I'm beginning to doubt the running order now, so let me check the lyric --- no, that's right. Good rocking song, with a very catchy chorus and a sort of traditional jig or something in the melody. Ah, interesting. I see the music is based on Faroese and
Irish traditional music. Guess that explains the jig then! Very melodic guitar here to be sure. “Hear the heathen call” ramps up the tempo as the Vikings charge into battle, heedless of the danger, their mantra
”Time will take us all/ And hear the heathen cry/ Finally we die.” More sort of power metal feel to this again, fretburning solo, one of the best on the whole album.
The title track takes us to the end, a pounding, galloping stormer that seems to bewail the passing of the Vikings and the rise of Christianity ---
”May the mighty Mjølnir nail the bleeding /And naked Nazarene upon the pagan planks/ Pound in the painful nails now and hang him high and dry” --- I recall when watching the excellent TV series “Vikings” recently a scene where the Vikings broke into a monastery and looked in disdain at the crucifix. “Your god is dead!” sneered one of them to a priest, just prior to killing him, “he cannot help you.” It's a good point, and yet at the end it was Christianity that won out as the pagan ways were driven out by the armies of missionaries that swarmed over Scandinavia and the north, seeking converts. Joenson seems to ruefully realise this, as his final words are
”Have we fallen too far to rise/ And closed our eyes?”
TRACKLISTING
1.Hold the heathen hammer high
2. Tróndur í Gøtu
3. Into the storm
4. Northern gate
5. Turið Torkilsdóttir
6. By the sword in my hand
7. Ride
8. Hear the heathen call
9. By the light of the northern star