Wednesday, March 16, 2016

SIG:AR:TYR "Northen" Album Review


                It may have only takes 6 years, but Canadian Blackened Folk Metallers SIG:AR:TYR are back with the mighty new release “Northen”. “Northen” marks the bands forth full length release and the first where vocalist Daemonskald isn’t performing all instrumentals, which leads to some new sounds in the music although still true to where the band came from originally.

                The album opens with “Helluland”, beginning with the sound of the ocean and acoustic guitar and distorted electric guitar harmonizing until the very early Black Metal riff begins. The song, and a lot of the album, is very much a call back to what Black Metal was in the 90s but kicked up a little by infusing the story element of Folk Metal. While very old school in its approach with sound, Daemonskald shows off his skills in a guitar solo that beats practically every Black Metal solo recorded between 1990 and 1995 since solos where “true Black Metal” enough back then. Thinking about it now, a lot of this song has a sound similar to recent Enslaved between the intriguing pace of the riffs and drums and the style in which the vocals are presented.

                Later on, you’ll find the song “Markland (The Hammer Fades)” which has a bit of a slow build up consisting of nothing more than the same slow riff with an acoustic riff underneath, but once the vocals begin and the riff turns into a chug you can tell what’s about to go down. Just kidding, you can’t, the common build up like that leads the mind to think it’s about to get insane and speed up tenfold and when it doesn’t and your mind can’t figure out what to do, well, those are the riffs that keep your mind focused on the song. This song is proof you don’t need to be faster and heavier than everyone else, the chorus is pleasing to the ears, played with a high tone than you generally expect but matching the tone and rasp of the vocals. Again, this is another song that shows off the prowess of the guitar solo and following the solo the song speeds up to blistering speeds for a short amount of time before jumping into another solo. Basically in the end what this song is saying is shut the fuck up and don’t try to guess what’s next because you’re probably wrong, which is a smart writing technique, when you can’t guess what will be next you’re constantly glued to the song.

                “Last Ship Sails” closes out the album in an epic Viking fashion, between the harmonizing intro that you can picture boats setting sail to, to the riff that follows that puts your mind on imagining the Vikings on those boats off at sea. Having a consistently epic sound to it, this song sets the mood for what it must have been like to lead families behind not only back then, but now, going off to fight anywhere, the soundtrack to the human mind.

                To close this out, I want to say my one issue with this release. While all the songs on this album are consistently great, written very well, show off the musicianship of all the instrumentalists, there’s one part of the album that was bothering me and still does now after quite a few listens all the way through. The vocals on this album are a bit low and generally in a lot of spots where the instrumentals do get a bit chaotic the vocals can be very hard to hear and as this is an album that tells stories it can be a bit frustrating when you want to hear the words. I say SIG:AR:TYR wrote a great album with “Northen” and it’s a great welcome back after 6 years, anyone who’s a fan of Extreme Metal infused with Folk Metal than pick this up ASAP.


80/100

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