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Týr: By the light of the northern star
17/08/09 || Euthanatos
Oh, golly, the joy, the magnificent joy and ecstatic bliss that is this album. Of what delightful honey drips from the tit of Freya. Týr have finally made the album I always expected them to. Yes, I’ve been riding these guys’ collective nuts since the first time I listened to them, with their previous album almost making my best of 2008 list, yet I always felt there was that little something missing. Well, fuck me in the ass and call me Sally, “By the Light of the Northern Star” is it.
It truly seems like the stars aligned for this one. Everything is pitch-perfect. Guitar melodies are 100% engaging and fun. Drumming is steady, pounding that 12 inch cock up our asses relentlessly. And the vocals! Clean, yet aggressive, drink-raising, head-banging, vagina-raping perfection. God damn, these Faroe Islands motherfuckers know how to make my dick hard.
And what’s even better is that every single song on this album is amazing. Sure, there are fucking killer tracks that are immensely fun and instant favorites, like “Hold the Heathen Hammer high”, “Into the Storm” and “By the Sword in my Hand”, but I swear to you, every song here features great song writing and musicianship.
See, while I really enjoy folk metal in most of its shapes and sizes, the whole growl-folk passage-clean vocals-growl-death metal formula was getting kind of stale. Yeah, it’s great, but come on, surely this isn’t the only way to enjoy mead and bang your head with a historically inaccurate horned helmet, is it? It sure as fucking isn’t! Týr shows that there is such a thing as power folk metal (no, it has nothing to do with power metal, calm down), where the folk perfectly blends with the metal, instead of being two separate entities forced together.
That’s what so great about Týr, and this album in particular; yes, it is your quintessential folk metal album, yet it sounds nothing like the other folk metal bands. It’s much more creative, entertaining and orgasm inducing. It truly sounds like chants after a victorious battle, not pale Scandinavian men bored out of their minds and yearning for the days of old where they could lawfully pillage Christians. This, good sir, gentle madam, is the real motherfucking deal.
I even love them when they’re singing in some bizarre language I can’t comprehend. What the hell do they speak in the Faroe Islands anyway? Faroese? Pharaoh? Fuck.
The only reason I won’t give this a 10 is because I don’t want K to fucking kill me. And believe me, he is perfectly capable of doing so.
The cover: Fucking awesome, like every Týr cover. Stick a viking in it, some swords, shield and a ship, and you’ve got your ultimate win right there.
- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Napalm Records
- Website: www.tyr.net
- Band
- Heri Joensen: vocals, guitars
- Terji Skibenæs: guitars
- Gunnar H. Thomsen: bass
- Kári Streymoy: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Hold the Heathen Hammer High
- 02. Tróndur í Gøtu
- 03. Into the Storm
- 04. Northern Gate
- 05. Turið Torkilsdóttir
- 06. By the Sword in My Hand
- 07. Ride
- 08. Hear the Heathen Call
- 09. By the Light of the Northern Star
