Odin Owns Ye All

This is not an album for casual listeners. It also helps if you like other forms of music than black metal. While Odin Owns Ye All is so rad it's almost impossible, there are no blast-beats present, no harsh vocals, no tremolo picking or white noise stabwounds. This album is about mythology (non cheesy), Norwegian wobbly rhythms, folk influences, and raw underproduced boxy-sounding atmospheres. To me this album is all the more black metal despite being a late 70s hard rock album by any other name.

The drums are so oddly played, all the beats are slightly off or ahead of the pulse of the album, and the guitar tone is very unpolished. Despite all that glorious tracks like Remember Tokk, Inferno, and Home are all very groovy, thick sounding, toe-tapping, and generally great mini-expositions of Norse mythology. You should buy a real copy of Odin Owns Ye All, because none of your friends will have it, Ragnar Vikse's vocals are awesome, and, let's face it, the album's cover art is really notable and not the same black and white scrawly abstract mess you usually get with black metal albums.

The song-writing is high level and coherent in every track, and the album works as a concept album, but all the songs can be taken on their own merits, so you can have a long night-time listen or rock out a few tunes in your car. Glesnes' guitars are super tight, Storesund's drumming is in the pocket, just not the pocket you're reaching for, and really it's all so swaggeringly Norwegian, you could replace all the Nordic embassies around the world with this cd.

Odin Owns Ye All, in this case buy the album and send hails to the One Eyed God. Norse pagan or not, this album is fitting praise for any god, and will tickle the ears of the right listener, someone who wants more from black metal than the usual predictable hipster dross.

The only album I think of when hearing term "Viking Metal" is actually this one, because it really bears in it some folk music reminiscences that are not stylisation but sound like real melodies of folk songs you could probably hear people singing in the villages ages ago. Simplistic but genuine.

The album would almost certainly be hated by metalheads, because all metal basis here is replaced with that genuine folk music melodism (except for Out Of Ginnugagap track, which does have rather thrash/death metal core). Yet it would also hardly be a hit with folk metal fans also since there are no stylisations here (except for the intro) - no flutes, acoustic guitars etc. All melodies are performed by clean vocals, typical rock/metal band instruments and keyboards. That's it. No catchy rock/metal riffs and no folk stylisations means no "hit" songs like those from Thyrfing, Finntroll and similar popular folk metal acts.

Production-wise it's also not perfect, this album definitely does not sound polished. As a result of all this, "Odin Owns Ye All" is doomed for underappreciation.

Let's see what exactly do we have here. First and foremost, this is a mid-tempo album, no single song here can be classified as fast. The base ingredients are clean vocal lines and a melodic accompaniment from the rest of the band (although I'm not talking about any melodic death like "in your face" melodicity - not at all). Only exceptions to the rule are intro Leve Vikingeaanden - basically a march like melody made by drums, keyboard melodies, - and following heavy track Out Of Ginnungagap - a heavier track, the only track actually that's metal in it's core, with some double bass drumming, heavy riffs and energetic vocal lines.

After that comes "the rest of the album", which consists of several midtempo songs with quite varied structures in most of them, some tempo changes, and all sorts of musical goodies. The goodies being interesting melodic lines, mood changes, things like drums+bass+keyboard parts, intricate melodies (in a folk-rocky way - not a prog-metal like, mind you), accentuation changes, and a vocal lines that one would like to sing along to. The mix of heavy tuned metal band instruments (i.e. high gain guitars, pounding drums, powerful bass), melodic and touching vocal lines, and background keyboard melodies is what makes this album good for metal heads that are looking for something more that just usual sonic assault of typical metal music. And a folky melodism in core of the music makes it more interesting than your average "gothic metal" or "viking metal" that kind of also has mix of melodism and heaviness, but lacks memorability and intrigue. Plus the fact that vocal lines are quite good, and songs themselves are songs - i.e. they're made for singing - they are emotional and touching (but not cheesy - which is also important).

Also in the vocal department we have occasional "choirs" (or something like choirs, if you can call people sitting in a pub, drinking bear together and singing - a choir), which are, unfortunately, not very well executed, and are sounding rather odd - especially when you hear the album for the first time. One does get used to them rather quickly in subsequent listens, but first couple of times you might not be able to get past Clash of The Elder or Odin Owns Ye All (i.e. tracks 3 and 4) just because of those choirs - and they are used a lot on those tracks (Clash of The Elder especially).

In fact it might be that if people would start listening to this album from Remember Tokk or even Home, onwards to the final track A New Earth, and only then go back to "Side A", maybe they would find it easier to get into this album and eventually love it. So I do encourage everyone to give more spins to this CD and especially it's second part - I do think it will grow on you and you will find it in your heart to like or maybe even love it, even if you'll need more than 5 or even 10 listens for that.

A few more words on the production: it's not polished, but it's not dirty either. Every instrument is clear on it's own, but they're not perfectly mixed together. Drums are somewhat too loud - toms especially, having too many reverb on them, they often overpower other instruments; keyboards are a bit buried in the mix, so their melodies become rather background - but one might actually even like this, because it makes overall sound heavier by giving way to guitars and base, and making riffs more prominent than keyboard melodies. Although guitars themselves somewhat lack mids IMO (sounds like they're over-"scooped" for the sake of heavier sounding).

I haven't checked much on the bands discography, but everything else that I heard from Einherjer was rather typical "wannabe folk" metal stuff that I didn't found much interest in. Thus to me this album stands alone as a real gem in band's discography in particular, and in viking/folk metal genre in general. I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks bands like Thyrfing and Finntroll are ok, but rely too much on simplistic gimmicks and stylisation.

And again, please be patient with this release and pay attention to it's second part - I really believe you will be rewarded for your patience.

Einherjer has never been the most complex of Viking metal advocates, preferring instead to write base melodies with mead swigging, mug slamming rhythms that can immediate cause every white male of North European descent between the age of 18-60 to beat his chest in tribute to his distant ancestors. Regardless, they were responsible for Dragons of the North, a pretty thundering effort, far more accessible than something like the vengeful album Frost by Enslaved, or Helheim's raging Jormundgand. For whatever reason, though, the band decided to make some changes for the following album, due out through Century Media, and brought on a cleaner singer named Ragnar Viske.

This was their big break, and well, I feel like they very much dropped the ball. First, the title of the album, Odin Owns Ye All, is kind of catchy, if a little silly, especially when you are staring at that obvious cover art carving of old One-Eye, Hugin and Munin. This leads one to believe that the band were aiming for some theoretical My First Viking Metal Album™ crowd. Indeed, it sounds as if the album were written to lull the babes of LARP gamers and SCA advocates in their cribs, while mommy and daddy played Arwen and Legolas, flinging packets of sand at one another or engaging in lewd acts while dressed in anthropomorphic animal costumes. The album is simply too festive...it sound likes a bunch of eunuch clowns dancing around in tights, serving fruits and honey to some flamboyant jarl, while slapping each other firmly on the rump.

Here is the formula underlying the majority of the material here: mid paced, plodding guitars chug along while saturated in flighty keyboard lines, with Viske trying his best to add traditional, manly vocals with just a bit of an edge. There are very few interesting riffs on this album, and even at its best, which I'll call "Remember Tokk", or the depths of "The Pathfinder & the Prophetess", you get a few throwaway melodies, a subtle grace to the standard palm mute triplets, and some acceptable backing shouts. I'd almost call this Gothic Viking metal, if that makes any sense, and unfortunately, it really doesn't work, to the point where the listening experience feels pretty awkward. Even on a bad day, with a severe hangover, a band like Thyrfing or Finntroll makes this feel like fluff by comparison, and though the ultimate goal of Odin Owns Ye All was to create a festive, cheery atmosphere that followed a particular set of traditions, I wouldn't even use this as background music when my chaotic dumpy level 63 dwarf berserker is hanging by the local tavern.

Perhaps the one thing here that did not eventually grate upon me were the lyrics, which seem to directly speak through the spirit of the Eddas, with a straight narrative dowsed in the native poetry of those tales. Unfortunately, the halls are alive with such gaiety here that it becomes impossible to place the fear of the gods, the doom of Ragnarok and the scars of cold and bloodshed into the thoughts of the listener. I realize these ancients times in question weren't completely resigned to a grim doom each waking moment, but that's the way I like to dream of them, and by the great cudgel of the Gods, that is what I will listen to when dreaming!

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

I should have known this album was a joke. Come on, just look at the title – “Odin owns ye all”? What could you expect except some parody of Viking metal, what it actually is? However, I was expecting something else. After all, this band had released the awesome Dragons of the North, a succession of Nordic anthems in true Viking epic fashion. So, what has gone wrong with them now? Well, I’ll tell you.

First of all, what almost totally ruins this album is the use of clean vocals instead of the usual harsh, semi-growled vocals they once used (as well as many bands evolving within the same genre). I have nothing against clean vocals, being besides a big power metal fan, but this drunken guy is just plain awful. Choirs are sometimes even worse, singing sometimes obviously off-key (like in Clash of the Elder). Again, I have nothing against drunkenness – look at Finntroll, could you find a more drunken band? But it stills delivers kickass folk metal. Granted, finding a singer worse than Quorthon himself was a difficult challenge but 1)First, Quorthon was Quorthon 2)He created Viking metal so can be forgiven 3)Music on Hammerheart was ten times better than on this album.

So there is the second point, the music. Where is the epic mood of the first album gone? Where is this strength which urged you to gather your good old weapons and go burning a bunch of houses in your neighbourhood? Granted, folk elements are still here, and well present – some tracks, like Remember Tokk or Home have a nice dancing feeling reminding a bit of polka elements used by Finntroll - but using folk elements isn’t enough to play Viking metal. Everything sounds as if the Viking spirit was progressively lost by the band. You can feel it, diffuse, discrete, but still there, in almost every song. Take this admirable instrumental part between around 2:00 and 4:00 on Remember Tokk – it’s a shame that the rest of the song is just fucking RIDICULOUS, like the title track is – or the epic chorus of The Pathfinder and the Prophetess. To sum up, music lacks a lot of heaviness, and catchiness. In folk/Viking genre songs are usually easily memorable thanks to the use of easily memorable folk tunes, instead of that no song is really memorable here, except the title track for its exceptional crappiness (a poor riff and lyrics consisting in “I drink to [insert whatever you want here] – Odin – owns – ye – all!”). One can’t really understand why this album sounds so dull and boring, except by the fact that the band has simply run out of ideas. You can actually hear very few actual riffs on this album, thus all songs sound more or less the same, some random keyboards being usually put on each of them to make a distinction (the song Inferno offers a good example).

But – wait! Just when you thought everything was lost, comes the true epic track of the album. Eventually the singer, singing far more high-pitched than in any other track, sounds like an actual singer and not a fucking drunktard. Eventually, this rather slow-paced song oscillates somewhere between folk, Viking and – yes - power metal (certainly because of the high-pitched vocals precisely, and a typical PM drumming), and is a masterpiece. Eventually, keyboards add depth instead of goofiness to the song. Eventually, kickass double bass, solos, everything you were asking for since the beginning. And, guess what? It’s the last track.

The band took obviously good fun recording this album, but one take far less listening to it... Unless he has the idea of skipping every track until the last one.

Highlights: A new Earth