...to North

After being heavily impressed by their debut release 'Fi'mbulvintr' I decided to grab myself the second album, already knowing that this didn't pick up the same hype that their debut release achieved and also knowing that it got a mixed response in terms of reviews. Of course, it would have been hard for the band to get even as close as to re-creating and adding new material that matched, or even, exceeded 'Fi'mbulvintr' and going into this album I was kind of expecting it not to match what the band had achieved in 'Fi'mbulvintr'. However, this isn't to say its a crap album; in fact it actually has some really interesting songs and parts and on the whole is quite enjoyable. I would very much say that King of Asgard have done a little bit of an experimentation with this album with of course adding a second guitarist, Lars Tangmark to, possibly, give the band more options on what they can do.

Throughout this album, King of Asgard have stuck to very much the same attributes as what they had in Fi'mbulvintr': fast, melodic, ranging tempo and harsh-type black metal vocals. Now that they have added a second guitar player to accompany Karl Beckman, King of Asgard have a slightly different sound to what they had in 'Fi'mbulvintr'; not just in terms of there now being a second guitar player, but I feel that the guitars have slightly gone away from that black/folk metal sound that they had in their debut and instead have opted to go for a more black/death metal sound. Having said that, however, the guitars still have quite groovy and catchy riffs in some songs such as "The Dispossessed" and the "Gap of Ginnungs".

I would even argue that Karl Beckman's vocals have also gone towards a black/death metal sound with him retaining his harsh black metal influence vocals in 'Fi'mbulvintr' and also start to use more deeper, death metal influenced sort of vocals in some parts of this album. The more harsher (deeper) sounding vocals on this album, along with the more black/death metal sounding guitars lead me to believe that King of Asgard are using this album as a bit of an experimentation, trying to create a more evil, more harsher kind of sound and veering away slightly from their viking metal sound that they had in their debut and try to broaden, their style of play and to be fair to King of Asgard I don't think they've done a bad job and have certainly made an enjoyable and listenable album in my opinion.

For those who have listened, and enjoyed, 'Fi'mbulvintr' don't expect another repeat of their highly acclaimed debut, but instead approach this album with an open mind and make your conclusions from there. For those who haven't listened to 'Fi'mbulvintr' I would still recommend this album as I believe King of Asgard still show their epic and atmospheric sound, whilst also trying to broaden their sound and give you a taster of what's to come in their third album 'Karg'.

King of Asgard’s debut took a lot of people by surprise, with half of the classic Mythotyn line-up suddenly bursting back onto the scene as if they’d never been away. Not that ‘Fi'mbulvintr’ was an exact duplicate of the style of Karl Beckman and Karsten Larsson’s old act, but the fact that it garnered such favourable reviews with the legacy of a big cult favourite hanging over it tells its own story.

‘...to north’ has more expectation leaning on it and less of a surprise factor going in its favour, so it’s maybe no great shock that it doesn’t quite hit the same heights as the debut did, but it still makes for a powerful and well-executed follow-up.

One of the greatest strengths of ‘Fi'mbulvintr’ was the relative variety of style and tempo between the songs that made it flow surely and evenly throughout, and while ‘...to north’ isn’t an endless trudge there are definite fewer breaks into outright galloping this time. That’s not exactly bad news though, as it is a relentlessly heavy CD, classic viking metal with no compromise in the brutality department.

Maybe the difference is that the debut was the summation of a few years worth of stockpiling songs, where this was more of a conscious effort to sit down and write a CD, but the music here feels more unified and pushing in a single direction. It’s a bit strange to be considering that a negative point, but sadly the more heroic, power metal-leaning style that enlivened some of the old songs has been largely excised here.

While it is a CD that works better when viewed as a single body of work – and the unremitting double-bass pounding helps this immensely – there are still some individual highlights to be enjoyed. The true opening song, “The nine worlds burn” is a snarling beast of a track, and the heaviness is nicely offset in the bridge when Helene Blad makes another guest appearance to reprise the heavenly, wordless melody that first appeared on “The last journey” on the debut CD.

Another guest musician threatens to steal the show on the doomy “Gap of Ginnungs”, with Falconer’s Jimmy Hedlund striking some light into the gloom with 2 ripping guitar solos that stand out a mile next to the less flashy lead work of Beckman and new guy Lars Tängmark, and is a big contributing factor to the song’s status as best of the bunch.

I don’t usually like to discuss the different editions of a new release, but in this case the digipak version is well worth a look, as the cover of the Isengard classic “Vinterskugge” is executed perfectly (with Beckman showing off some rare clean vocals in) and it dovetails perfectly onto the end of the CD.

‘...to north’ may not distinguish itself quite as much as ‘Fi'mbulvintr’ did, but while it lacks some of the valiant inspiring melodies and is a small step down in overall quality compared to its predecessor, it remains a mighty fine helping of furious, uncomplicated viking metal.

(Originally written for http://www.metalcdratings.com/)

After their critically acclaimed debut album “Fi’mbulvintr“ in 2010, King of Asgard – featuring two members of viking metal legend Mithotyn – finally present their new output “…to North”. So what has changed since then? Not much indeed, if you ask me. The band still has the same lineup, still plays straight, riff-based and melodic metal with lyrics inspired by Norse mythology.

The cover artwork again has become very nice; not an epic kind of approach as it was the case with the first album, but fitting very well to the music.

To make this clear from the beginning: “…to North” is not the most innovative viking metal release I have heard in a while. You will notice that while listening to this one, you will come up with a bunch of (famous) bands this record sounds like; Bathory (“Up on the Mountain”), Týr (“Harvest”) or Obscurity are just a few I had in mind when I got to hear “…to North”. The lyrics also deal with typical mythological topics heard often before. So, nothing worldshaking here. Do these facts make “…to North” a bad release? The answer is a clear no. Considering that the viking and pagan genre is not exactly of high renown for quantum leaps, this is still a very good album.

After a short intro the guys directly go full speed ahead with a very melodic neckbreaker called “The Nine Worlds Burn”. Some very nice riffs and melodies here! What I also like very much are some good guitar solos throughout the album. “Gap of Ginnungs” on the other hand has a really dark atmosphere and comes up with an overall slow beat. Together with the title track, my favorite song on the album. Another noteworthy song is the above mentioned “Up on the mountain”, which could have been on Bathory’s “Twilight of the Gods”.

Although some passages seem to be heavily inspired by other bands of the genre, King Of Asgard still come up with a good deal of originality. Seen as a whole, the new album has also become quite diverse: We may not get to hear too many completely new elements, but we do get to hear a whole lot of different ones, all neatly put together to one uniform piece of metal. As I have mentioned before, “…to North” contains some very good riffs, lead and solo guitars but also tons of epic parts (also some female guest vocals). King of Asgard manage to create this without many bits and pieces, mostly even without keyboards (if we do have keys, they sound great – for example at the beginning of the last track “…to North”).

If you like traditional viking metal with harsh vocals you should give this one a try. For me “…to North” is an overall good album with some slight weaknesses here and there. Nevertheless King of Asgard clearly show that it is not absolutely necessary to reinvent the wheel in order to deliver a powerful and epic album. So maybe it is finally time to wipe away the tears for those who are still sad about the break-up of Mithotyn. As it seems, King of Asgard are here to stay: so together with Falconer, we have two great bands resulting from that break-up.

Originally written for www.northwind-promotion.org