MANEGARM - Ynglinga Attens Ode
Napalm Records
OK so bias alert I'm a MANEGARM fan and I love their early Viking metal releases. But hey if you're a fan of blackened pagan metal with a Viking themes then how could you not? After their early days the band bounced around to a couple of other labels. They finally ended up on Napalm Records which years ago in a review I said it was the place where good bands go to die.
Well their first couple of releases on Napalm were average to say the least which was another confirmation of my opinion. But this year MANEGARM finally put out a great Folk Metal release that I've actually been waiting a decade for. The Viking shtick is mostly gone so the band has been doing the whole traditional Folk Metal style for many years now. On here their tenth album they've managed to get it all by hitting all the buttons.
Ynglinga Attens Ode has in all as far as the folk metal genre goes. You've got the songs about pagan myths and sagas. Which are all sung in Swedish by the way. The folk melodies and song structures are sown in with the powerful riffs. It all comes across in a grandiose effect. Not only does vocalist/bassist Erik Grawsio carry the weight on these songs, whether it's cleans, screams and howls. There's added backing vocals, male and female. Oh yeah and plenty of violin into the mix.
The bottom line here is that these Swedes have created an album that's infectious to genre fans as well as being accessible to newcomers. My biggest problem with the whole folk metal genre over the past decade has been it's generic tendencies. The older bands got stagnant. Most newer acts played it safe. Finally here we have an opus.
https://napalmrecords.com/deutsch/
LISTEN HERE:
https://manegarm.bandcamp.com/album/ynglinga-ttens-de
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