Vansinnesvisor

Thyrfing are a strange phenomenon: on the one hand they are held in very high esteem by certain elements of the underground, yet they have never fully been embraced by the wider metal community to the degree that I think they deserve. You seldom see them listed amongst the chief viking/folk metal bands, yet I believe that their best material is really only just short of Moonsorrow at their finest, or even perhaps maybe the first two Tyr albums. Thyring, after a couple of albums to sort out their sound, became titans.

It is with great pleasure, then, that I examine ‘Vansinnesvisor’ more closely. Released in 2002 by the band’s best line-up, it’s their first move away from the more piping and jolly style of viking metal into a darker, heavier and more serious direction. It is also the greatest album the band have ever created, and is one of the genre’s classics.

Opening track ‘Draugs Haug’ bursts out of the blocks with a strong keyboard melody on top of a quite frenetic and devastatingly heavy guitar riff. It’s an empowered burst of energy, with huge headbanging chugs juxtaposed with - at one point - a blast beat, while moving through a quite varied structure. It's a track that leaves me breathless even when sitting still. Second song ‘Digerdoden’ is the single and contains a clean sung pagan chorus that sends chills and is probably the catchiest track on the album.

English language tracks ‘The Voyager’ and ‘The Giant’s Laughter’ are anthems, especially the former with its “True men die in battle…” refrain and epic sea-voyaging atmosphere. It could well be the album's highlight. All the tracks here contain that difficult to define quality in the sound that creates an authentic and compelling listening experience; the historical feel of the whole seems real, yet it's never twee or pretentious. Final track ‘Kaos Aterkomst’ is epic and folk-driven, and brilliantly evokes the atmosphere and mood of ancient times in northern Europe. There is an almost tragic, emotive, feel to it, and it’s the perfect way to end the album.

Musically, this is a hugely heavy album, with guitars used powerfully and benefitting from a full and hard-hitting production by Daniel Bergstrand at Dug-Out studios. There is no getting away from the fact that this is beefy and metal driven, and while the keyboards of Peter Lof add a pained and darkened atmosphere, lovers of viking metal with an emphasis on the metal won’t be disappointed. There is also variety throughout the album, without ever sounding distracted or unfocused.

Perhaps the highlight, however, are the immense and savage vocals of Thomas Vaananen. He roars his way across the album with a passion and aggression that is nothing short of staggering – he is indeed one of metal’s greatest vocalists. While Jens Ryden would make a good fist of it after ‘Farsotstider’ as his replacement, there was simply no matching the excellence of Vaananen, and I rued the day that he left the band. He is one of those men who was born to roar.

A special mention must also be made for the album artwork and packaging. My jewel case version is a work of pagan art. The darkly mysterious front cover is perfectly complemented by what I consider to be the best band member photos in the viking/pagan genre, with the members in variegated forest settings. Taken by Patrick Engstom, the photos are nothing short of stunning. The way the artwork is integrated across the whole package is fantastic, and it’s one of good old Niklas Sundin’s best works. I recommend everyone buys this on CD or vinyl to experience it (I bet that album sounds amazing on vinyl, too).

Thyrfing’s ‘Vansinnesvisor’ is probably one of the best three or four viking/pagan/folk (call it what you will…) albums of all time. It’s serious, mature, heavy and emotional. Embrace it.

I'm not very familiar with Thyrfing's material prior to this 2002 release. From what I've heard, it's less serious, belonging more to the upbeat, Turisas vein of viking metal. That is absolutely untrue as far as Vansinnesvisor is concerned, however. If such a thing as authentic viking metal exists, it most certainly takes its origins from black metal and adds a dose of native European folk music, and that is precisely what this Thyrfing album is all about. These eight tracks are all sprawling epics, filled to the brim with notes endeavoring toward melancholic, primeval nostalgia. These Swedes prefer to ignore the progress (or regress) man has undergone since the days when regular sacrifices were made to Odin and Valhalla was as real as Scandinavia itself, when Aurora Borealis was more than the sum of chance environmental conditions.

Thyrfing's music is primitive in a sense, with war-like drums pounding away as jagged, down-tuned chord progressions recall ferocious battles and the harsh realities of life in that past era. Rather than being purely pessimistic or violent in nature, however, Vansinnesvisor excels in its treatment of olden glories. The album is littered with ambitious synthesized strings and evocative lead guitar, contrasting with the raw, bleak nature of the rhythm guitar, percussion, and most of the vocals, which consist predominantly of acerbic, throaty black metal shrieks, but occasionally venture into extremely well-placed clean singing, accenting the more harmonious sections of the music. This is most clearly evident in “The Giant's Laughter,” a track which rarely fails to send chills up the spine.

Ferocious, jarring black metal has been done before; melodic black metal has been done before (probably too often), but few bands have managed to combine the one with the other to such a degree of credibility. Vansinnesvisor embodies the totality of life in ancient Scandinavian society; it is a respectful throwback to simpler and arguably more rigorous times, but not times bereft of wonder or beauty. Thyrfing pay tribute to the good as well as the bad, the majestic as well as the filthy. Essential to any collection of emotion-stirring black, viking, or folk metal.

Thyrfing started out as a pretty boring and standard viking metal band. If they would have continued upon that path, I would not have recognized them as anything special. But something changed on this album. You can hear it coming when you listen to the preceeding album Urkraft. That album still has a lot of traditional viking metal in it, but there is something there, something darker, something more serious.

They've gone from writing shallow songs about drinking mead, pillaging, glorious battles and other typical viking metal themes, to writing songs about the plague, deceases of the soul, the darkest forms of hatred, suffering and other things typical to the period in time. It's hard to realize just how good it's done and how powerfull it is if you can't understand swedish. The lyrics does not survive the translations into english.

So if I can't understand Swedish, there is no point in listening to Thryfing?

Of course there is, I'm just saying that you might not appreciate the full effect of the dark atmosphere that the music and lyrics create. The music is still the main reason to listen to Thyrfing. Just as their lyrics are darker, so is the music. This is more riff-based instead of based upon power-metalish synth melodies, which fits the overall expression of Thyrfing and makes it easier to take them seriously. The riffing is extremely good, and the transitions between the fast and the slow parts always feels right and logical.

Thomas Väänänen's voice is another thing that makes it very easy to take Thyrfing seriously. His voice is just perfect, very distinct and violent. And you can really hear the lyrics which is always great. The guitars are played perfectly, no more, no less. The drums however stands out a bit, not in a bad way though. Joakim Kristensson plays very solid and good, he doesn't overdo it like many other drummers, but always keeps the drumming interesting while still fiting the music well.. just like a drummer should. That is in my opinion true greatness as a drummer. Most drummers gets way to technical and often overdo it.

The sound is not perfect from a sound technicians point of view, but for the atmosphere of the music, a "perfect sound" would have been the worst thing they could have done. Don't get me wrong, it is no early Burzum, it is heavy, thick and deep. But it isn't crystal clear.

All comes together to make the best viking metal album the world has ever seen, only succeded by their next release Farsotstider.

Highlights:

Draugs Harg
Digerdöden
Världsspegeln
Ångestens Högborg
Vansinnesvisan

Thyrfing, although not the most productive band, definitely knows what stability means. Their fourth release is keeping the same style as the first three; a harsh, simple yet efficient, melodic and purely pagan sound. Thyrfing is one of those bands you don't expect to deviate much from their original style, a solid formation that found its sound early and intends to keep it until the end. Vansinnesvisor is exactly what you'd expect the band to release after Urkraft. Nothing unexpected, nothing new but everything improved and still pure fuckin' viking!

What makes this album stand out of previous Thyrfing works is: 1- The quality of the production and sound. The band is gaining in popularity and this allows the use of better equipment and installations for recording.(duh.) 2 - The music itself is improving. You can see that the band members have spent lots of time with their instruments and this definitely shows in the quality of the songwriting. The whole album is very catchy and has a number songs that after being heard once, will remain stuck in the listener's head for a few days, at least.

The lyrics are almost all in swedish, with the exception of 2 songs, The Giant's Laughter and The Voyager which are in english. What really impressed me on this release is Thomas Väänänen's vocals. He has always been one of my favourite singers and on Vansinnesvisor he displays an excellent speed and deepness in his voice, better than he ever did. It's impressive to hear him sing with such violence and passion on the opening "Draugs Harg", probably the fastest and most brutal song of the album.

From start to end, the guitars offer lots of catchy and celtic-influenced riffage, true to Thyrfing's signature. Technicality and speed seekers be warned, this album is not for guitar virtuosos, it's not necessarly a show of unbelievable talent but rather a result of rich and intelligent songwriting. The same applies to drum and keys. As a whole, Vansinnesvisor's sound has a lot of headbanging potential and enormous personality and uniqueness. When you hear any of Thyrfing's song, you know it's Thyrfing and it cannot be anything else.

In short, Vansinnesvisor is yet another excellent Thyrfing release, probably the most catchy and brutal until now, and it's worth a try for any true fan of pagan/viking death metal. It's harsh, crude, savage, whatever you want to call it, Vansinnesvisor is about vikings and barbarians and it shows!

This Viking Metal band is from Sweden. 6 out of 8 of the songs are sung in Swedish. This is a plus for me because I love the language even though I don’t know it and because the vocals sound better in Swedish although that might just be because the two songs in English are both the weakest songs on the album although still very good.

We start off this masterpiece with Draugs Harg which is simply an amazing song. It opens beautifully and quickly goes to the vocals. This song is very fast moving with vocals during most of it which is great. I love also how the chorus is sung. Simply amazing. I love the energized and evil sounding vocals. At times they even remind me of Dani Filth although I still think Thomas Vaananen’s vocals sound more skilled and something more than just shrieking. This song while 3:59 minutes long feels like 2 minutes only because of its fast pace and tons of shouting which makes it more interesting.

Digerdoden wastes no time and goes right to instruments and vocals. This song is a bit slow paced however I love the bell-sounding background effect that begins at 0:30 and makes several more appearances throughout the song. The chorus is beautiful and is mostly sun in clean vocals which allows you to hear the beauty of the Swedish language. Another beautiful song.

The third track, Varldsspegeln with a nice guitar and the vocals kick in at 0:16. They do sound a bit forced out but are still great and are much better organized and energized on the chorus.

The Voyager starts out with a fiddle sound which is good but sounds quite eerie on such an album. This song as said before is still good but the weakest on the album. The vocals aren’t as entertaining either.

Next we have ourselves a nice little epic called Angelstens Hogborg and the beginning sounds like it has a lot of folk influence even though the folk isn’t as present throughout the whole album. After the song turns very nice and melodic and the vocals are brilliant on this song.

The Giant’s Laughter starts off very weirdly and if you just heard this song randomly you wouldn’t even think this was a metal song however thankfully this song turns heavily and is a good song despite the beginning. I really think it would be better if they took out the beginning all together. It just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the song or even the album. Later on towards the end of the song there are also some clean vocals and while they do sound a little misplaced on such an album, the vocals are still good.

Vansinnesvisan is probably the second strongest song on the album following Draugs Harg. The vocals are really fast on this song and after a nice beginning the vocals do kick in really nicely. The chorus has a weird little sound effect which really gives you a dark and evil atmosphere. Beautiful song.

Kaos Aterkomst starts off with a nice acoustic guitar piece before the other instruments and vocals kick in. Another epic-like song clocking in at about 7 minutes and highly enjoyable.

Overall this is one of the best albums I own and I am very happy I ordered this album. You can’t really classify this album in one genre but it is a beautiful combination of Viking metal, some folk elements, and even melodic black metal. The melodies are really memorable on this album.