HOW FAR TO ASGAARD

I watched a BBC programme about the folk music in the Faroe Islands last year. The music was both interesting and very good. To my astonishment, Tyr was included in the programme with some pretty good stuff. The connection between the folk music scene and Tyr was pretty obvious and their inclusion in the programme was more than justified. Hence; I bought their albums. I then forgot about them and their albums gathered dust. I just bought their new album and found out that Tyr was included in PA, but there was none reviews of their first albums. I therefore started to listen to these albums from the first one to the most recent one.

This is their debut album. A debut with some obvious flaws. A lack of confidence is the biggest flaw of this album. My ears was finetuned into a nice folk rock assault. What I got was mostly generic heavy metal. The first song is good folk rock. Then the album falls like a tonne of bricks into German heavy metal land. Accidently; this is my least favorite music. Actually; I only love folk music from Tibet less than German heavy/power metal. Just marginally, that is.

It feels like Tyr does not believe that folk music from the Faroe Islands combined with some heavy metal would break them outside the pubs of Thorshavn, the capitol on these islands. The subsequent albums has proven them wrong. But this album has too much generic heavy metal, and pretty substandard heavy metal too, and not enough folk music inspired metal. The two-three folk rock inspired songs here is the best songs on this album. They are still not excellent, but still good. Good enough to give this band a chance and if I am not mistaken, Tyr rectified the mistakes they made on this album. This is Tyr's debut album and just that. We all do mistakes. Those who are any smart learn from our mistakes. Tyr did.

2 stars