A Year of Music

For me, and I suspect a lot of other people, Viking metal is musical comfort food: not too challenging, not especially good for me, but very satisfying. While there are exceptions (on the progressive end, Enslaved; on the wanky end, Moonsorrow), most Viking metal follows a standard template: growled death metal vocals, loads of subdued keyboards, occasional clean classical guitar breaks, folk melodies and instruments (penny whistle, bagpipes, concertina, Jew’s harp), and lots of the broadly consonant, epic chord progressions and harmonies that are viewed with suspicion in most mainstream metal. Viking metal really owes more to NWOBHM bands like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest than it does to folk music.

Though it gets very little coverage in the English-speaking metal mainstream (such as it is) this stuff is very popular in Scandinavia and Central Europe. Every time a reviewer says something bad about Ensiferum or Windir on the web, a horde of angry young men materialize out of nowhere to heap scorn and threats of bloody, fiery death on the offender, generally in grammatically correct, stiff English. It’s sort of endearing in the same way that the apocryphal old stories of mobs of Scandinavian teens throwing bottles and bricks at Cradle of Filth’s tour van are: it’s nice to know that the kids care.

Thyrfing are a decidedly middle of the road band, and Urkraft is a thoroughly average album. The production sounds like the band pressed the “TÄGTGREN” button on their mixing console: meaty, chugging guitars, taut drum sounds (maybe triggered, maybe not), and a nice, clean mix that emphasizes the guitars without obscuring the vocals and the keyboards. For all its midrange chug and growled vocals, this music is essentially ambient task music: it’s music for drinking beers with friends, or playing role-playing games, or hacking out code, or reading Raymond E. Feist novels. If Thyrfing were making black metal they’d be Dark Funeral, and if they were making thrash they’d be Machine Head circa The Burning Red – there’s nothing here that’s going to blow your mind, but it’s eminently enjoyable for what it is.