Review Summary: Grab a horn of mead after a long day swinging that axe.
If there’s one thing Tyr is good at its drinking beer and playing consistently great Viking metal. While their lyrical theme isn’t built off of creativity, they succeed in playing a style that is their own. With more guitar-driven music than many of the folk metal fellows they share the genre with; Tyr does a great job maintaining consistency with every album they release. Their sixth album,
The Lay of Thrym is full of more familiar Norse mythology, but when combined with their unique sound, it creates another album with astounding, heroic, fist pumping Viking metal songs to swing an axe to.
From their previous album,
By The Light of the Northern Star to the current one, Tyr has started to play their music in a somewhat faster fashion. Some of their songs, namely the album’s first three songs, almost have a thrash influence to them. The bands lead guitarist, Terji, plays faster, more cohesively and therefore moves Tyr away from folk metal where they first established their sound. Another aspect that sets this album apart from previous ones is the appearance of only a single traditional Faroese song. On every other release by the band, at least a third or more of the songs were derived from traditional Faroese music or at least something near the Norwegian Sea. Also this album like the previous one has seen a step back from the bi/trilingual vocals that were present in many of the bands past albums. In past times, lead singer Heri Joensen would sing in Faroese and English, sometimes adding in other Scandinavian languages.
While only part of the limited release, the two bonus songs are undeniably a few of the best on the album. Tyr must have a serious man-crush on Ronnie James Dio; well either that or they decided to pay homage to him by covering one song from his days with Sabbath and one from Rainbow’s
Rising album. Either way the two covers are perfectly conducted and are worth the extra purchase or acquisition of the deluxe edition. Let’s be honest who hasn’t wanted to hear a Viking metal version of “Stargazer”?
Tyr’s sound doesn’t change from album to album and that’s alright with most of their fans. They are able to remain consistent with every release they’ve put out thus far and they seem pretty content with their current state. While their most previous efforts see them moving from the folk metal realm to a more progressive metal focused sound, it does them justice because the tiny change in their sound is able to keep it fresh and interesting. We all know you’ve had a tough day swinging your battle axe, so grab a horn of mead and relax in front of the fire with the maidens and let Tyr soundtrack your days kill.
Otherwise, pretty good review.
