TYR- By The Light Of The Northern Star [Album]

Napalm/SPV Records

May 21, 2009, 10:37 AM

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So we now come to the third in our special Napalm/SPV series with a move from one mythology to another. While Alestorm use the world of pirates, Tyr use primarily the world of Vikings combined with Swedish/Finnish and Faroese traditional music to create their world.

Now from a personal standpoint the mythology of Vikings is normally an interesting one due to the ferocity that the Vikings brought to the table when invading all those years ago, granted they pillaged and did unspeakable things but the myths of Ragarnok, Asgard etc always makes for a good story (Thor for example!)

Tyr try the hardest they can on this album but I’ve seen bands do it before much more heavily, one big case in point is Amon Amarth, plus for two of the tracks it’s more a case of you only understand half the story. The reason for that is having to wait for an online translation which is fine but on a concept style album I like to know the story well from the get go on tracks 2 and 5 in particular.

Now as an aside I mentioned how the ‘promo protection’ for Alestorm was OK due to the in-character approach, this one however cuts into the song at the wrong point and has a shrill beeping sound in-between the bit you are listening to… something I can’t stand ever since the Morse code ones on an Arch Enemy album…

Musically though it’s OK for a mix of Pagan and Folk Metal but like I mentioned earlier it’s been done by other bands slightly better but Heri Joensen as the main songwriter does his best. Similar to Alestorm the verdict will be if you are a fan of the genre this will be fine to listen to while drinking some mead out of a drinking horn , if not don’t expect to suddenly jump for joy at this one.

However if you are curious to get onto this band, start with Eric The Red first!

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