Hamferð - Men Guðs hond er sterk (2024)

Country: Faroe Islands
Style: Melodic Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 22 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

One place I always check at the end of a year is the Angry Metal Guy website, because they cover a lot more metal than I do and don't tend to be swayed by the trends that affect more mainstream reporting. Angry Metal Guy himself chose this as his favourite metal album of 2024, ahead of one album I hadn't heard of, Kanonenfieber's Die Urkatastrophe, and two that I've reviewed already, namely Fleshgod Apocalypse and Opeth. Clearly he likes Hamferð, because he also awarded their second and prior album, Támsins likam, his Album of the Year, in 2018. No, they're hardly prolific.

What he likes the most seems to be the way they merge two distinct sounds, whether he describes them as "dour and sinister, but simultaneously fragile" or "tragedy and hope". I also appreciate a sense of duality, which is most obvious to me in the vocal styles of Jón Aldará. He has two distinct ones. The rich harsh growl that he employs to open up Ábær and the album as a whole, is sourced from the doom/death textbook but with has relatively limited intonation. The soaring tenor that he uses to fill this music with a timeless ache is all nuance and far more typical for gothic metal.

The more I replayed the album, the more I heard that in the music behind him too. When he's in a death growl mode, the music is bludgeoning, often monotonous, and with a subtle echo, as if they play every instrument extra hard and so every individual sound resonates for longer. Sometimes, especially towards the end of songs, it slows even further to hint at funeral doom. However, when Aldará lifts into his clean voice, the music gains nuance too, creating soundscapes of mood. These songs are well worth listening to with a careful ear to see how it's all crafted, but only after a few times through letting it all just wash over you as slabs of emotion.

As you might imagine from all that, I do like this album, but I don't like it as much as Angry Metal Guy does. Ábær and Rikin took a while to grow on me. They got there eventually, Rikin first with a merger of near funeral doom monotony and death metal flurry, the clean vocal sections joined by some surprisingly lively guitarwork as nuance. However, on every listen through, and I'm up to six or seven, it's Marrusorg that grabs me first.

It's the longest song on the album, albeit hardly an epic at six minutes and change. However, this one has an aching grandeur to it that speaks to me, with a calmer folkier clean voice to open it up and a delicacy that doesn't negate size, as if this is a vast mansion of a song that's stood up to the centuries but is likely to collapse any day now. Sections of crushing funeral doom give way to light and tender parts and both feed into each other. That mansion was clearly loved in its day but it's forgotten now and the saddest part is that nobody will know when it's gone. It's the standout for me and I feel its ache deeply. I especially like the moments when the guitar quietly sets the stage for a ramp up in emphasis, like My Dying Bride used to do.

Once Hamferð have gone there, they're happy to revisit the territory on Glæman, with throbbing staccato guitar notes, incredibly sparse piano and that calm clean voice again, which we know will escalate at some point. I may not hear a lot of possibility in his harsh voice, beyond its texture, but his overall range here is stunning. That's most apparent here on Glæman, because it's the song he stays both clean and calm for longest. The chaotic rumble that begins Í hamferð is a firm reminder of what hasn't happened for the past five minutes and change.

Almost appropriately, Í hamferð, a heavier song in every way, is my second highlight, because it's a firm reminder of the power of that heavier approach. Aldará does his best harsh work on this one and the twin guitars of Theodor Kapnas and Eyðun í Geil Hvannastein bolster up almost into a wall of sound, though this always remains death rather than black. It's almost a storm surrounded by a buffer of utter calm, because Fendreygar starts out that way, but with an ominous beat from Remi Johannesen and a hint of fuzzy guitar that tells us that it's not going to stay there. Damn, this one builds. Highlight number three.

I wasn't planning to run through these tracks in order, but it ended up happening that way. What's left is Hvølja, the heaviest, most rumbly, most funeral doom the album gets, with the heaviest the clean Aldará voice gets, tortured into strange shapes but somehow still clean. There's also a title track to wrap up the album, but that's something completely different than anything thus far. It's an unusual piece, resonant guitarwork that's presumably played on an electric guitar but with the aim of mimicking a folky acoustic guitar. The only other music is the timeless wash of the ocean on the Faroese shore and the spoken voice of an old man telling a story. It's quite the achievement, as I find myself listening carefully every time, even though I don't understand a word he says.

Google Translate tells me that the title is "But God's hand is strong", while Hamferð is a peculiarly Faroese word to describe manifestations of dead or missing seamen. The remoteness of the Faroe Islands infuses this music to its core. It's bleak but rich, harsh but beautiful, crushing but folky. The result is the third album from Hamferð, just over a decade after their first. It's an easy 8/10 for me because it soaked into my soul, but, unlike Angry Metal Guy, it's not my Album of the Year.

Týr - Battle Ballads (2024)

Country: Faroe Islands
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Apr 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

It's been five years since a Týr album and they're touring again. My son got to see them recently in Mesa and he thought they were solid, even though he was personally there to see Trollfest again, who were one of their support bands. Now, five years may not seem like a long time but that's the beforetimes on the other side of COVID, so it's a long time indeed. The only time they've taken as long between albums before was the previous gap, between 2013's Valkyrja and 2019's Hel, which was twice as long as any gap before it, so this may be the new normal.

If so, then material needs to be pretty strong and, while this is certainly a reliable and enjoyable album, it rarely seems to ache to knock my socks off, unlike Hel, which was infused with energy to do precisely that. This feels a little more relaxed to me, but it's slowly building on me. Hammered is a decent opener, but Unwandered Ways is better still, nailing the melody and the bounce, and Dragons Never Die almost matches it. Row has a tasty rhythm, which it really ought to have given that it's a rowing song. Given that, I'm not sure that it should speed up at the end, but maybe this is competitive rowing rather than raiding foreign shores.

And that's the first chunk of the album, because this doesn't break naturally into two sides. These first four songs are all sung in English and they all do much the same thing in different ways with varying degrees of success. Later on, skipping over two tracks for now, the third chunk features a set of three more of these. These seven tracks comprise the core of this album, even if they fall on either side of its heart.

After them is the closer, Causa Latronum Normannorum, which stands pretty much on its own. It's an interesting song, because it's slower than those seven default mode tracks, the fast drumming of Tadeusz Rieckmann aside. It's initially sung in what I presume is Faroese, then shifts to Latin, so it definitely takes a different approach there. And it flaunts itself, building more sedately with an effortless ease, as if it's impressing on us how powerful it is so that we don't try anything. I like it.

However, I like the two tracks in the very middle of the album even more. They're notably different from each other but they sit well together because they're both sung in Faroese (or is it Icelandic, as Google Translate seems to think?) and, maybe in part because of that, they feel more authentic. However, I have a feeling that they'd feel more authentic even if they weren't. The other songs are new, of course, and they feel like they're new songs. I don't know for a fact that these are new too, but I have no reason to believe that they aren't, other than they feel timeless, like they could be a pair of five hundred year old classics given a modern day Týr treatment.

Torkils døtur (Torkil's Daughter) is a ballad, though it does bulk up late on, but there's a real power to it. The guitars are acoustic for the longest time and they're delightfully delicate in comparison to to the rest of the album. However, the vocals quickly take over and everything feels naturally harmonised, like it's not one voice but thirty singing so closely in unison that it becomes a single enhanced one. It's also orchestrated, in ways it certainly wouldn't be in a Faroese inn, but the approach works. I find it an impossible song to resist, even if I have no idea what they're telling me.

Vælkomnir føroyingar isn't a ballad, but it carries the same sort of heritage to it, just translated a lot deeper into modern day folk metal. Maybe Torkils døtur is an actual Faroese folk song whereas Vælkomnir føroyingar is merely the most successful new song here at tapping into that tradition. It's easily my favourite track, that harmonised vocal approach continuing but with a more obvious merger of clean voice over harsh voice, singing the same words. The melodies are more effortless than even Unwandered Ways and the whole thing is always over far too quickly for me. I feel like I could be carried along by this one forever. Given that it translates to Welcome Guests, that seems rather appropriate.

Where this leaves me is that my favourite two songs are the ones not sung in English. Lead singer Heri Joensen is clearly fluent and he delivers very well indeed in English, but there's an element here in the Faroese songs that simply isn't there in the English language ones, one that's typical for folk metal, of course. If there's a subgenre of metal that values native language more, then I don't know what it is. I like everything on this album, but I like some of it a lot more than the rest and the rest means the majority.

Are Týr trying too hard to find a more mainstream sound and losing a little of themselves in the process? Let's see how the next album turns out in what I'm now guessing will be five or six years from now.

Hamradun - Hetjuslóð (2019)

Country: Faroe Islands
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Nov 2019
Sites: Facebook | Wikipedia

If your tastes run even a little towards world music, this is going to be an easy album to like. Even though vocalist Pól Arni Holm started out with Týr (that's him on their debut, How Far to Asgard), this isn't really folk metal at all. It's folk music, pure and simple, merely folk music that's played on rock instruments at points. How often, I'm not sure. There are a lot of folk instrument sounds, but they may or may not be the product of keyboards.

How far Hamradun go in either direction, towards pure folk or towards metal, can be easily seen in the first two songs.

Kirsten Piils kilde is a dark ballad. It's driven by a voice, which is clean and traditional and is clearly telling a story. I have no idea what that is, because tradition here goes as far as adapting ancient ballads and singing them in Gøtu-Danish, a dialect of Danish that's spoken in the Faroe Islands, from which Hamradun hail. I presume that the rest of the songs are sung in Faroese but, either way, I don't understand the lyrics but would like to, as they revolve around Faroese legends and history.

There's a deep, slow drum beat behind the vocals on Kirsten Piils kilde that surely comes from a drum kit but is phrased like a hand drum, albeit a hand drum of brutality. There's a hint of something else behind it too, conjured up either by keyboards or more traditional folk instruments. The full band only joins in after a build that lasts for a minute and a half and, even at that point, it's still all about the vocals. It's the sort of story song we might expect to hear around a campfire, in good company made even better by alcohol.

Hevndin, on the other hand, is a metal song. It's a heavier song from moment one, with an electric guitar to the fore and none of the instruments are as restrained. There are riffs and guitar solos to highlight musicianship along with the singing. There's dynamic play, moving from loud to quiet and back, presumably as the lyrics require. Sure, the song's point is still to tell a story, but the music isn't there just to back it; it's also there for itself.

If those songs mark the boundaries, the other seven songs each fit somewhere in between and there are still surprises waiting for us. Feigdarferð starts out rather proggy, the keyboards at the fore, and it goes on to feature very nice electric guitarwork. Grimmer går på gulvet has a gorgeous alternative vibe to it, not least because of the bass of Heri Reynheim underneath. What a heavy build for a song that's more rock than metal! Naglfar almost finds a glam metal vibe as it begins, though that's unsurprisingly not where it goes. At the end of the day, though, these are all story songs told to folk tunes.

I liked this album, which is Hamradun's second, after a self-titled release four years earlier. Hetjuslóð means The Path of Heroes, so highlighting the lyrical focus on history and legend. The biggest problem I have is that I'm unable to understand what Pól Arni Holm is singing and that's more important here than usual, because these are story songs. I can enjoy these as pieces of music but unfortunately not as the stories they are. At least until I can find English language lyrics somewhere...

Týr - Hel (2019)

Country: Faroe Islands
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 8 Mar 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

We may be taking the high road while Týr take the low road on the opening track, Gates of Hel, but they're no Scottish band. Sadly I missed them in 2018 when they came through Arizona but that also meant that I missed the protestors because Týr are the only other reason, with whale hunting, why anyone here has even heard of the Faroe Islands.

I'm English so I've heard of the Faroe Islands but I haven't heard as much of their premier musical export as I should. I have enjoyed what I have heard and this feels accomplished from moment one. It's Týr's eighth album and the six years since their prior release is twice as long as they've ever taken before. They must have been bursting with material and it shows because a wild energy is obvious here. They want back into our ears.

It's also a long album, running a full seventy minutes, though everyone in the band starts out frantically, as if they want to reach the end tape as soon as is humanly possible. For a while, this is a album in the form of a sprint, though it does that through sheer power, catchy vocals and moments for all the band members rather than any attempt to leap into thrash. It's as fast as I'm aware the band have gone.

Gates of Hel and All Heroes Fall are both full of busy runs for each band member. Gunnar Thomsen gets some very prominent runs on his bass, but the guitars of Heri Joensen and new guitarist Attila Vörös don't miss out on the fun and neither do the drums of new fish Tadeusz Rieckmann. The band definitely start out as they mean to carry on, with an heavier and much more overtly power metal feel but less folk elements.

Ragnars kvæði shows a different style. This is a slower song, progressive musically and with completely different vocals, not only because the song is sung in what I presume in Faroese (all but two tracks are performed in English) but because it's done more as a chant than a song. The style fits absolutely in the folk metal arsenal but it's the only time it's hauled out here in what is otherwise very much a power metal album.

That goes for Joensen's vocals as much as the admirable instrumentation behind them. This is lively stuff, as both folk and power metal often tend to be. I had to pause this my first time through after a dozen tracks and the silence to which I returned seemed much deeper than what preceded the album starting. It's an album that moves into your house and makes itself very comfortable indeed.

The question, of course, is whether it'll move back out again with just as little invitation. I've heard impressive albums that command our attention and impress on every front but which vanish off into the distance as soon as we turn them off, as if we'd never heard them to begin with. On a first listen, the biggest problem here is that the sound is very consistent from one song to another, with only Ragnars kvæði doing anything particularly different.

With eight tracks over forty minutes, a consistent sound really isn't much of a problem, if that sound is good, which it certainly is. With thirteen tracks over seventy minutes, however, a little variety is needed and I was keen to find out if that variety would show up on a second listen.

Well, some individual tracks do start to stand out a little, but it's not an easy process and many of them still sound very similar. Sunset Shore is a heavy ballad and Against the Gods has some patience to it. Far from the Worries of the World has a more singalong chorus and a folky instrumental chase in the midsection; it also ends well with a quiet little coda that leads into the quiet little intro to King of Time. It may be illusion but there seems to be more soloing later on.

Clearly, though, it'll take more than two listens for these songs to start to really distinguish themselves. If the songs are lessened by sounding so similar, the good news is that they're all good songs. There isn't a duff track here and, heard outside the framework of the album, each and every one of them would impress.

I like this new faster and heavier Týr and the future seems bright for them. Now, let's not wait another six years for the next album!