Thoraway - Navigating Nightfall (2024)

Country: Australia
Style: Heavy/Viking Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 10 May 2024
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Thoraway hail from Brisbane in Queensland, which seems odd given that they play Viking metal. If you dug a hole through the centre of the world from there and survived a trip through it, you'd be in the Canary Islands and Scandinavia is quite a way north from there. However, given that three of the band members have names that sound like they might be Vikings themselves, it isn't a huge stretch. This album doesn't sound like it was written in Norway, mostly because Joseph Wiley sings entirely in English, but it does feel far more authentic than I expected it to be.

It's big and bombastic, often easily categorised as epic metal, but it's also both angry and melodic with a real sense of motion to it, as if the band are playing on a swaying ship that's sailing right at us at a fair clip. Wiley's vocals, occasionally deepened by backing vocals, hold a promise. Thoraway are, well, on their way. This holds for a couple of songs, Pianara and Greetings, which means thirteen minutes because the album isn't short but it only boasts five tracks. Wiley sings primarily clean but there are echoes of harsh for effect. It's all epic and powerful, as Viking metal ought to be.

And then comes Wild Child of the Night, at the heart of the album, to shake this up. Now, it's still epic and powerful, but it sounds very different to the two openers, mostly because the guitars are completely absent for almost a minute. This one has a strong slow groove built out of bass, drums and a commanding vocal and that groove continues even when the guitars show up in surprisingly dissonant fashion. In a way, the effect is very much the same, just more ominous because this ship is bearing down on us in slow motion. In a way, though, it's very different, because it's a story song and so it never gets closer to us than the page in front of us.

The bottom line is that these songs can't be ignored. Whether we feel threatened by this rushing ship or we feel welcomed in kinship by it, it's big and brash and utterly in our face, even when it's taking time for Jan Gustav Engmark's enjoyable bass solo during the second half of Wild Child of the Night and overtly during that song's woah woah sections and the repeated harsh "We salute you!" at the end. This holds as Bedtime Story takes over, because the theatrics that open it up are rather like a pirate, with all the traditional trappings, stuck his head through our window and stole us away into what we're going to hear. It's blatant stuff, but it works perfectly with the big and bold sound.

With the exception of Bedtime Story, the songs get progressively longer, almost as if the band are teasing us into what they do and getting deeper each time. Pianara kicks off over six minutes and Greetings is a little longer again, Wild Child of the Night is eight and a half and Einherjar (Army of One) is almost eleven. At a breath over six, Bedtime Story breaks that trend, but its intro helps it to feel longer than it actually is. It's long enough to feature a strong guitar solo from either Truls Nilssen or Martin Alexander Einarsen. On most of these songs, the riffs are more important than the solos, because of how they bludgeon, but the latter are still excellent.

Wild Child of the Night has to be my favourite song here, but Einherjar (Army of One) won't leave me alone, perhaps because Thoraway benefit from the added song length. It feels more versatile too, the general approach being the same but the harsh vocals emphasised more and a few more fast and extreme sections that go along with that. As if to counter it, there's a looser exploratory section midway that feels like the ship that is Thoraway isn't barrelling down on us but journeying nonetheless and finding itself in new waters. It's wonderful texture, all the more because of how heavy the sections either side of it happen to be.

I like this album, all the way to the comradely vocals that wrap up Einherjar (Army of One), almost like a drunken choir. Nothing about it is small. Nothing about it is subtle, except maybe that single stretch midway through the closer. It wants our attention and it's happy to grab it. It's also happy to sound very heavy, the bass end pumped up high and the solos always partly buried in the mix. It works because of the sonic assault but it wouldn't for another band, where we want the guitars to be as clear and free as the lead vocals.

I believe this is a debut album, following five singles, only one of which, Greetings, made it to the album, so I presume Thoraway are relatively new. Two members, bassist Jan Gustav Engmark and guitarist Truls Nilssen, were born in Norway, both in Bodø, so I'm guessing that their moving down under prompted this antipodean Viking metal band's formation. The rest of the band are Aussies, it seems, even guitarist Martin Alexander Einarsen, whose name doesn't suggest that, but they're on target with this sound. I look forward to hearing it develop.

Wind Rose - Warfront (2022)

Country: Italy
Style: Folk/Power Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 10 Jun 2022
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Here's a surprise for me, substituting for what I'd planned to review today because, well, it wasn't up to snuff and I have no interest in being a hatchet man critic. My job at Apocalypse Later is based in discovery and this album was a discovery for me as it may be for you. Wind Rose hail from Pisa in Tuscany—yes, that Pisa—and they play power metal. This is their fifth album and the highest rated of them at Metal Archives, albeit with only one review thus far. They apparently started out with a more progressive form of power metal but gradually shifted into a more epic folk/power hybrid.

Frankly, I could also see the Viking metal label being thrown at them too, even if they're a little far south in Italy to be considered Vikings. The Mediterranean is rather different in temperature from the Baltic or the North Sea, after all. To me, this is power metal that's constantly underpinned by folk melodies and delivered in a rough but melodic singalong style by male voices that could easily belong to people wearing horned helmets, not that Vikings ever did, of course.

The key to the band's current sound may lie in the bookends to this album. It kicks off with a short two minute intro, Of War and Sorrow, that's epic and instrumental and full of folk elements. Then, fifty odd minutes later, it ends with Tomorrow Has Come, all acoustic guitars and hand drums and rough voices in folk harmonies. It underlines the observation that every track here is effectively a different take on Tomorrow Has Come, just heavied up, as indeed this one becomes around three and a half minutes in.

Sabaton surely have to be thrown out as a comparison, but with that Viking edge, as the vocals are rougher but just as melodic and singalong. Like Sabaton, they're singing about war but with more of a participatory mindset and they're doing it in in the form of shanties and folk epics. Draw a line from Alestorm to Sabaton and you'll find Wind Rose perhaps three quarters of the way over to the Swedes, having shorn the silliness and swearing but keeping the drunken singalongs.

And everything here feels like a drunken singalong, not in the sense that Francesco Cavalieri slurs his delivery, but because the setting is so inherent in the music that we can't help but imagine him singing in a oaken alehouse. In fact, he isn't just there, but standing behind an oaken trestle table with a large stein of beer in his hand and his cohorts singing along next to him. The folk aspects do underline all this too, because these songs are surely as good companions as that beer and just as inviting. When they're heavy, they're comrades in arms on the road. When they calm down, like in late sections of Army of Stone, they're warm pubs with blazing fires and buxom barmaids.

If it wasn't for that implicit welcome, the downside to this album would be that there isn't a lot of variety here. Frankly, if you like any one track here, you're going to like every one of them because they're all of a similar mindset. They don't tread exactly the same ground, though, and not one of them outstays the welcome, which is why the potential downside turns out to be one of its biggest successes.

In fact, I'll go a heck of a step beyond that. Every song is worthy on its own merits and could easily count as the track you'd want to play to catch a friend up in what this album is. I listened through a third time specifically with that in mind and it's so consistent that I simply couldn't pick one. It was always the one I was listening to at any particular moment in time, whichever one that happened to be. What's more, every time I thought maybe not this one, it would do something to enforce its place at the top of my list.

Maybe I feel reasonably safe in placing I am the Mountain just a little below the rest and it's hard to compare the closer to the rest because of two thirds of it being acoustic. So the highlight would be one of the first seven songs proper, from Army of Stone to The Battle of the Five Armies, and an acknowledgement like that means that this has to be a 8/10 with thoughts of going up to a rarely awarded but much coveted 9/10s. I've only given out two this year thus far and this is the closest I can remember of making that three, but I think the ruthless consistency of 90% of the album and a slight shift for the rest blocks that. Rating aside, grab some bottles of mead, some drinking horns and a bevy of friends and you'll have a grand old time with this. Slainte!

Frozen Shield - Ínia (2021)

Country: Spain
Style: Folk/Viking Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Nov 2021
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I listened to this album because it's folk/Viking metal from Barcelona and, if that isn't right up my alley, I don't know what is. However, it's also something else, which is a sort of metal opera that's so theatrical that I actually stopped listening to the album at one point and shifted to YouTube to watch the official music video instead. The longer it runs, the more like a metal opera it becomes and, while I did enjoy that approach, it's not what I liked most about the album.

It's cinematic from the outset, with a symphonic overture to kick us off, appropriately entitled A New Tale is to Begin. If I knew the Lord of the Rings soundtrack better, I might wonder if this piece was lifted from it. It has that Howard Shore sweep to it, but it focuses in really well on the quieter and folkier sections. There's an interlude halfway too, Facing the Gates of Stone, and a glorious enclosure at the end called One Last Page, and, between them, they add up to eleven minutes of immersive instrumental time. Of course, the album runs a generous hour and seven minutes so don't worry, there's lots here to explore, whatever the overarching story.

And I have no clue what that is and I don't have lyrics to hand. All I know is that the first song, The Greatest Journey, is lively Viking metal, while the album gradually shifts more towards folk metal as it goes, though that's floating in the background even at this point. This one is a real highlight. It's bouncy stuff with a harsh voice leading and cheery clean voices in support like a drunken choir. It's up tempo and perky and feels exactly like a bunch of warriors sloshing their steins together, a bevy of buxom wenches on their laps, as they celebrate a forthcoming victory wherever they'll be raiding or conquering tomorrow. A narration midway underlines the cinematic aspect and there's a frantic and joyous folk metal jig soon after it.

So far so good, even if I had to wonder at this point if Frozen Shield have been encapsulating that Viking mindset a little too much, given that they've been around since 2010 but this is their debut album. They put out an EP in 2014 and a single in 2018, none of whose songs appear here, but they suddenly got serious. This is a quality release entirely on the basis of the music alone, but there's a second disc with instrumental versions of everything, three official music videos and another to serve as a lyric video. I have no idea why it took them so long to do this, but I'm happy that they've got round to it now.

If it starts really well, it does lose steam a little as it goes, but not much. There are good songs in the middle of the album, including the frantic title track, which finds an epic singalong vibe by its end, and the delightful Warrior Woman, which is full of nuance, not only through an excellent use of harp to lull us into a false sense of security before the song erupts into motion in a heartbeat. None of these songs let the side down, but none of them are up to The Greatest Journey, the song that defines what this band can do.

And then we get to The Lair of the Mad Magician, which is as batshit insane as the title suggests, a prancing Disney-esque intro transforming into a dark operatic aria. This is the point where I had to shift from audio to video and, while it's a terrible music video, it's as crazy as it needs to be and this song is either going to be your favourite song here or your least favourite.

And, after it's done, the band really dive into the metal opera approach, with a set of songs that I appreciated a lot for their contrasts and instrumental chops. In a Timeless Dream is led by violins, flutes, acoustic guitars and a female voice that I presume belongs to a guest. Whoever it is does a stellar job and this is easily my favourite song here behind The Greatest Journey, even though the two are completely different in almost every way. Canvas of Snow isn't quite as good but it does a lot of the same things in a lot of the same ways, without remaining acoustic throughout.

And that observation is going to stay with me the longest from this album. This band may not have a lot of product to their name thus far, but they're clearly excellent musicians and ambitious ones too, given just how much they throw onto Ínia. Now, let's not wait a decade for another album!

Nidhoeggr - Arise (2021)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Oct 2021
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I'm not entirely convinced by Nidhoeggr's approach to folk metal, because the music is as lively as you expect from the genre, if downtuned a little, but the vocals are primarily harsh, which makes for an odd contrast. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and I did find a charm in songs like Twilight Zone moving between folk/death and lively jigs. I'd definitely be down the front at one of their gigs, policing the pit, and getting into the spirit of the gig, especially during the folkier bits, but I also wish that there were more of them, even I got used to the approach and came to appreciate it.

Certainly, it's those folkier bits that grabbed me here and they start early in The Journey, which is the first song proper. The vocal sections are lively, I guess, but they're a lot less lively than any of the instrumental sections in between. Then the band really kick their feet up and we heed the call to dance, even if we can't. And, if that holds through the parts using only traditional instruments, it holds double when they bring in what sound like accordions but may well be the work of synths.

I always look for exotic instrumentation on folk metal albums and I'm not sure there is any here in truth, but it sometimes sounds like there is. Onwards kicks off with harpsichord, even if it's really synths, then adds an odd bouncy sound to the background that reminds of dance music. It's quite a neat addition actually, even though I've probably just made it sound like it shouldn't be. I like it in this song and on Winters Wight later on. I also like the various other neat additions that show up across the album, but more about that later.

The other thing I liked here a lot was the occasion venture across genre boundaries. Maybe I'd see the harpsichord as a nod towards goth (as with the violin on Winters Wight), but Onwards isn't a gothic metal song. However, Scorched Earth kicks in very much like a psychobilly song and I could totally picture a bearded metalhead's fingers running up and down the strings on his double bass, even if that wasn't happening in truth and the instrumentation was traditional. It sounds unusual but cool and I dig this song a lot.

The most frequent border that Nidhoeggr cross is the one from folk metal into Viking metal. Rise and Fall isn't the first shift across that border—it's there from the outset in The Journey—but it's surely the most overt. And I think this works very well indeed, because of Janos Thomann's harsh vocals. They may not be my preference for a folk metal album but they work really well on a Viking metal album and, when the two genres merge on songs like Twilight Zone, it all sounds great. The Viking/death angle does threaten to overwhelm the folk but the folk battles back valiantly and it ends up being perhaps my favourite song here.

And that also means that my favourite three songs are all next to each other on this album, three very different songs in slots four, five and six. It's a decent album before them and it stays decent after that with those neat additions to each song I mentioned earlier to elevate it, from the organ intro to Mighty Willow to the basswork of Thibault Schmidt early in Desolation, never forgetting little piano touches from Lorenz Joss that often go by unnoticed on a first listen but leap out to be noticed on further runs through. However, none of these other songs quite challenges those three as the first half becomes the second. At least not yet. I'm liking this more with each listen so I may not be done with it yet.

Enslaved - Caravans to the Outer Worlds (2021)

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive Black/Viking Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Oct 2021
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Enslaved have been busy of late. It's only been a year since their fifteenth studio album, Utgard, a strong album that made my highly recommended list for 2020, but they've knocked out four, count 'em, four live albums since then, albeit in limited editions (300 copies each and 1,000 more in a box set), and now there's a new EP to boot. And, while 'm still listing it as a progressive black/Viking metal release, as I did Utgard, that's really not the case, because they've moved a long way from those roots. Really, they play progressive metal nowadays.

It's a short EP, running just over eighteen minutes, and two of the four tracks on offer are shorn of vocals, a pair of Intermezzos to break up the vocal tracks, but without a closing vocal number to be the final bookend. Each track is interesting, but the opening title track is the highlight without an argument from anyone listening, I don't think. There's a lot going on in this song, which is an epic even at only six and a half minutes long. It feels like a ten minute plus piece, not because it drags but because so much happens in it and all of it is comfortable and patient and unrushed.

It begins and ends with swirling mist, out of which emerges the prowling bass of Grutle Kjellson, a harbinger of doom countered by the keyboards that grow around it. The guitars are a frantic and penetrating force, almost experimental, but the groove the song finds is more akin to Hawkwind than anyone else, incessant and driving. The vocals are initially harsh, raspy and determined, but a second clean voice takes over for the chorus and we have a conversation. This journey evolves; I imagined that these Vikings started out on a ship in rushing water, but ended up traversing space on their journey to the Outer Worlds. Whatever it's telling us, it's magnetic.

The other song proper is Ruun II: The Epitaph, presumably a sequel to the title track of their ninth album, the award-winning Ruun, from 2006. It's a little shorter but just as patient and deceptive in how much it achieves. It's a quieter piece too, one that starts out progressive but ventures firmly into gothic territory as it grows. It's hypnotic in its repetitive opening, but there are hints behind the droning keyboards and ritual hand drums that only grow when the vocals show up. Again, the Hawkwind influence shows up, with pulsing determination, but there's Bauhaus here too.

The instrumental tracks are less interesting but they're still worthy. They both find agreeably odd vibes, but neither feels like a complete entity, but I'm not yet sure whether they ought to be part of a much bigger, more ambitious piece or whether they should be split up further into a bundle of short interludes, especially the first of them, Intermezzo I: Lonnlig. Gudlig., which could easily be broken up into two pieces or expanded into something more substantial. I'm not convinced that it accompanies either the title track before it or Ruun II after it, so it becomes a question that won't ever find its answer.

And so this is very much an assortment of Enslaved music to dip into rather than the coherent four track EP it may be trying to be. Everything's worthy and some of it is excellent but everything also works best in isolation from everything else. Maybe it's a teaser for a forthcoming album, when it might make more sense. In the meantime, it's more enjoyable stuff from an endlessly fascinating band still growing and evolving thirty years into their existence.

Einherjer - North Star (2021)

Country: Norway
Style: Viking Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Feb 2021
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Norwegian Viking metal band Einherjer have returned to Napalm Records after a quarter of a century. The last album they released on Napalm was their debut, Dragons of the North, in 1996, and the world is a very different place now to then. Viking metal wasn't new in 1996 but it wasn't a particularly busy genre back then and it hadn't spread very far outside of Scandinavia. Now Viking metal has found its way across the globe, which makes the genre an interesting one for the musicologists to define.

Einherjer have also grown as a band in those twenty-five years and this, their eighth album, is clearly more mature than their debut, even though, at heart, it's still simple in mindset. Viking metal is most often described as black metal slowed down somewhat with folk instrumentation added and the lyrics focusing on paganism rather than Satanism. That's mostly true, but I've always felt that Viking metal is a sonic exploration of strength and that's really applicable here.

Everything on this album speaks from a position of strength. It's not particularly fast, certainly not if compared with the blastbeats and wall of sound guitars of most black metal, but it's inexorable, ever moving forward with no intention of stopping or diverting its course once in motion. The riffs are of granite and they're accompanied at points by odd anvil noises, which of course are demonstrations of strength too. Have you ever seen a blacksmith who couldn't crush you in his fist? The drums refuse to speed up because Gerhard Storesund, formerly known as Ulvar, is more interested in beating the crap out of them and letting them echo. We just know he could drum ten times faster if he felt an urge. He doesn't.

The vocals from Frode Glesnes, formerly known as Grimar, aren't harsh so much as they're rough. He's bellowing not growling and certainly not singing, but his words are easily intelligible and they're as much of a promise as they are a lyric. Everything that comes out of his mouth is a statement and we're sure that he means it all. Now, who did he promise to kill and who did he promise a flagon of ale to in harbour after a successful raid? Someone should keep tabs.

I like everything on this album, but I realise that only two songs really stood out for attention, so it's a 7/10 release.

The best is Listen to the Graves, which wears the black metal origins of the genre on its sleeve, even if we can hear Grimar's bass prowling throughout. It's a strong song anyway but its elevated by a really neatly layered chorus. There are multiple voices there and they play off each other perfectly for great effect. I dig the solo late on too and the even slower drumming that comes later still.

The other is West Coast Groove, an unlikely title to sit on a Viking metal album given that it conjures up visions of surfer dudes on Venice Beach who might listen to Suicidal Tendencies but might be fans of rap music instead. Of course, those aren't the "raging waves" Einherjer are on about. These are the raging waves of the North Sea crashing against the west coast of Norway, as the longboats prepare to launch. "Behold the West Coast groove," they bellow. "We're the Norsemen. We're marching on."

This isn't the greatest album I'll hear this month and it's not the greatest thing Einherjer have done, but it's a solid and dependable listen that does everything a Viking metal album ought to do. It sails into our worlds and the band intimidate and fight and conquer before heading back home so they can drink about everything they've done within these forty-two minutes. And we look forward to the next visit in another two or three years.

Amon Amarth - Berserker (2019)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 May 2019
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Amon Amarth have been a force to be reckoned with pretty much since they got together way back in 1992 and especially since their Twilight of the Thunder God album broke them globally in 2008. This eleventh album demonstrates what they do well across a dozen tracks and ably highlights why they're support on Slayer's farewell tour right now. Many people are calling it their best work in years.

So why is it leaving me mostly dry? Well, I'm not entirely sure.

Certainly some of it is that the majority of the album feels comfortable and safe and that's not something I expect from my death metal. Even a melodic death metal album is supposed to have some level of evil to it, something that's abrasive and heavy and in your face. Raven's Flight does that here and I can absolutely see the pit exploding a couple of minutes in. There's also a heavy section in Mjolner, Hammer of Thor that meets that need.

But the rest feels far too comfortable. I listened to the new Possessed EP earlier today and it feels evil and passionate and energetic. By comparison, Johan Hegg's voice is getting warm and cuddly, as if he's singing songs like Shield Wall to his grandchildren around a log fire. There's an emphasis beat in Skoll and Hati that ought to be calamitous but it's underwhelming. Maybe that's a production issue but I doubt it because this sounds smooth and well mixed throughout.

In fact, maybe that smoothness is the problem because it highlights just how effortless this is becoming for Amon Amarth. They're so good at what they do that even the more intricate sections are seamless, to the degree that the band members appear to be hardly even trying. Songs like The Berserker at Stamford Bridge or Wings of Eagles are Amon Amarth telling stories by the numbers. I won't call this material easy to play but they make it seem like it's as easy as the alphabet song.

Now, I really shouldn't complain if any musician is just so damn good that he can play fast songs like Skoll and Hati or Wings of Eagles without even breaking a sweat, but I feel as if folk that good should keep challenging themselves. One reason why Metallica's ...And Justice for All was so great is because the band really weren't that good; they simply gave it their all and played their socks off, which elevated their skills to another level.

Fafner's Gold is a fantastic start to the album, because it's a varied and intricate piece, with highs and lows and all sorts of interesting moments. The problem is that it suggests that the rest of the album will follow suit and it just doesn't. Valkyria comes close, with a glorious breakdown using bass and drum that should never seem that effortless, and Into the Dark gets interesting at points. The rest of the songs are more like When Once Again We Can Set Our Sails, which just finds a pace and follows it for four and a half minutes until the next song kicks on and that's about it.

I feel like I'm being emphatically negative here and I really don't aim to be. This isn't a bad album and there are plenty of highlights. It's going to sell well and help bolster Amon Amarth's reputation as a major force in the modern metal landscape. But it's bouncy and comfortable and accessible and easy to listen to and death metal should never be that way.

Maybe it's time for Johan Hegg to finally bite the bullet and own up to his band playing Viking metal rather than melodic death. This would go down far better with a big drinking horn full of mead in an oaken hall with brothers and sisters in metal around vast benches. Perhaps that's all that's bugging me. It's just that I haven't felt that way about an Amon Amarth album until this one.

Herteitr - Battleblood (2018)

Country: Colombia
Style: Viking/Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 16 Dec 2018
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I just couldn't resist taking a look at this EP, not only because it's an indie release from a pagan/folk/Viking metal band and I have a particular fondness for folk metal, but Heiteitr are a Viking metal band from that best known of all Scandinavian countries, Colombia. Yeah, that caught my eye too.

Now, I have no interest in being elitist in the slightest but it's difficult to imagine people close to the equator in South America drinking out the endless winter night with their battle compatriots and the Thor's hammer in the Herteitr logo emphasises that this is Viking metal in the Scandinavian vein, even with the presence of folk elements like a charango, an Andean lute traditionally made from the shell of an armadillo. How frickin' metal is that?

The charanguista is Yilmer León, one of two guitarists in Herteitr; the other is German Gomez who also plays mandolin and handles vocal duties. In addition to bass and drums, there's also Diego Gómez on accordion and Leo Zauriel playing a variety of wind instruments, which float enticingly above this material. They've been around for a decade but this is their first recording.

I liked Battleblood a lot, even if I ache for more overtly Colombian elements in their sound. Even if it's odd to see Viking metal from outside of Scandinavia (though this isn't unprecedented, given Ymyrgar's exploration of the Norse eddas from Tunisia), folk metal escaped the north long ago and we now have enticing material incorporating folk instruments from cultures as far adrift as Mongolia, Israel and Japan. Now I want to hear Colombian folk metal without the Viking influence (I'll be reviewing some Ecuadorian folk metal tomorrow, which fits that bill wonderfully).

Leaving aside my global folk metal wishlist entirely, this is good stuff, even though we only have four tracks to enjoy. The Pride of War starts off on the right foot with a rousing effort that should have our mugs of mead swaying in appreciation. Battle Cry and By Death Comes Glory ably keep that spirit alive because there isn't a poor track on this album, let alone a bad one. Everyone and everything does its job well.

The real highlight, though, is the seven minute closer, Flames of Fury / Steel Burning. It starts slower, giving us the calm before the storm with traditional instruments, then launches into motion with the guitar down low and the wind up high. Gomez adds his growl and the melody weaves around him. Guitars swirl and chug, then bounce halfway through when things quieten down, presumably as one half of this track makes way for the other. There's a lot going on in this song and I dig all of it.

Now, given that it took Herteitr ten years to get round to an EP, can we have a full length album a little sooner than 2028?