BY THE LIGHT OF THE NORTHERN STAR

Folk-metal band from Faroe Islands. Melodic combination of simple power metal and Nordic folk songs. Sounds unusual at the beginning, but very soon you will be bored. Musical formula isn't very complex, and musicians just use it again and again for each their song.

All album sounds as Helloween work, placed on Vikings land and reworked for local listeners. Each song is short metal folk ballade ( with great energy but very repetitive musical sound), or war song, adapted for metal heads. Possibly, could be a great soundtrack for pseudo-historical Viking battles movie. In all cases, Helloween (or Manowar, in US version) do it better.

This is an album that took me ages to get around listening to, but I mainly heard it as other mediums, i.e. in the keyboardist of my band's family car (her name is Cathy btw, just so I don't have t give her a long finger aching pronoun.

This is her kind of music, folk metal with very catchy chorus, and gang vocals, basically drinking music. Now I prefer my battle metal as long and epic songs (mainly Moonsorrow and early Týr).

This album is a bit of a different direction from their earlier material with Bathory like long epic songs (me and my brother agree that true Viking Metal is what Bathory origianly did in the early 90's and the late 00's)

This was a great album, with some amazing songs, and maybe the odd filler, but it's overshadowed.

1. Hold The Heathen Hammer High - Pretty epic with a frantic chorus. Great song for a single. 9/10

2. Tróndur í Gøtu - This is a song that was definelty played in Cathy's car on long journeys. The language flows so well in this song. Amazing chorus. 10/10

3. Into The Storm - Nice chorus. Pretty cool guitar solo. 8/10

4. Northern Gate - Pretty cool riffing. A wee bit repetitive. 7/10

5. Turið Torkilsdóttir - Love the vocal intro. Sounds backwards. Great instrumental work. 9/10

6. By The Sword In My Hand - Best song on the album. Amazing chorus. This is an amazing car journey song. 10/10

7. Ride - This is the most played song in Cathy's car. Amazing song. The main riff rules. 10/10

8. Hear The Heathen Call - Great chorus. Very folky and drunken disordly. 9/10

9. By The Light Of The Northern Star - Very epic chorus. Great ending.

CONCLUSION: This was really enjoyable. Everyone should buy it really.

Tyr continues their viking raids.

Sorry, could not resist this pun. But the viking clad Tyr is off course playing on this image. So does Enslaved and Einherjer too. Just as Bathory did twenty years ago. There are some diffeences though between those bands and Tyr.

Tyr has gone down the commercial route during the last albums. There are still a lot of metal in their sound. But strip away the metal and you find a hymn singing band with a lot of celtic and nordic folk music added to the sound. This sound is then again enhanced with blazing guitars, drums and bass in the same vein as Manowar. A lot of Manowar, in fact. Tyr is clearly operating in the same scene as Manowar. And that is in most people's books not a compliment. Not in my book, anyway.

It all comes down to quality. This album does have a lot of blazing guitars and noise, but not any really good tracks. It feels like Tyr is running on empty here and the art of good songwriting has deserted them as much as the fish has deserted their shores. Hence, this album is nothing more than half decent and a sure dust collector in my music collection.

2 stars