(Metal Blade Records)
Total Playing Time: 01:09:53
Coming from the Faroe Islands, from the town of Tórshavn,TYR is not the band that needs recommendations. They were formed in January of 1998, while the former members were living in Copenhagen. “Hel” is the band’s 8th full length album and, once again, they deliver high quality Progressive/Folk Metal. Progressive for the musical part and Folk or Pagan if you like, for the lyrical part.
Going into the album, we can see that it is solid, very well played and with a nice and polished production, 3 aspects that this band is constantly giving us. The album contains 13 tracks. I know that some of you may find 13 tracks too much for a single album. It is a fact that album with 7-10 tracks, are easier to listen to, but here we have songs that are very easy to listen and this is coming from me. I tend to run away when I listen the word progressive (except for PSYCHOTIC WALTZ, SHADOW GALLERY and of course TYR). Moreover, I can easily say that they flirt a lot with Power Metal, which makes perfectly sense as Progressive and Power are two genres that fit very well together, especially when we have the right recipe, which in TYR’s case, we do.
As a trivia info, it is worth mentioning that TYR became famous in their homeland, when they participated in the Prix Føroyar contest, in 2001. They played the song “Ormurin Langi”, which made its way into the CD compilation created for the contest. This song’s live version became the biggest hit ever created in the Faroe Islands and one year later, it became a hit also in Iceland, which paved the band’s way for this country also.
I will not bother you any more. Once again, the band gave us a high quality album, which will make the 1 hour and 9 minutes listening a pleasure and a bit trippy if I may say so. Just close your eyes and travel to the Norwegian mountains, fjords and ancient battles.
Nick “Yngve” Samios
8/10
