Yggdrasil - Irrbloss (2011)

Yggdrasil's 2009 sophomore Vedergällning was a beast of an effort, trumping their debut and thrusting them to the heights of what the folk metal sphere has to offer a starving audience which so often is forced to settle with sillier bands. Lush, beautiful and fully in tune with its black and Viking metal influences, carefully balancing both its clean and rasped vocals, melodic driving guitars, synthesizers, tight drumming and traditional adornments like violin and mouth harp. I find its successor Irrbloss to be a mildly less intricate experience, but nonetheless hitting a lot of the same emotional strings, with a noted improvement in the vocal arrangements that deserves a mention.

Snarling passages are alternated with clean male and female vocals, and to the band's credit these never develop into forgettable fodder as they do in many similar outfits who bite off more than they can chew simply for having such diverse elements available to them. The majority of the material here flows along at a mid-pace, strung across thick chords of somber, inherent melodies while flurries of folkish leads are threaded through the anachronistic landscapes of "Bergtagen", "Tokikvad" and "Uppåkra. The multi-layered vocals are formidable, hurling one back into the annals of memory as if the host of a centuries old village were surrounding him with song, while the rhythm section is tremendously competent at building power behind the notably simplistic guitars. Just listen to the amazing chanted intro to "Skaldefader" and be blown straight into the dark ages.

They also excel in cleaner climes, like the intense escalation which inaugurates "Norrland", or the closer "Kungabål", pretty much pure, sorrow swollen string folk with gorgeous female vocals. Most of the tracks are managed into accessible sized bites, with only a few stretching themselves to greater lengths ("Tokikvad", "Norrland"), so there is very little of the droning repetition that often poisons the more pretentious artists in this category. The production is full and glistening without being overly digitized or polished, and probably my only issue is that the individual guitar lines are often drab in of themselves. Not that Yggdrasil are supposed to be excessively sprightly or foolish sounding; they are in fact solemn and poignant. But it would be a positive if the band's wonderful skill at arrangement could be broken down into its components without losing some of the mood and sorcery. That aside, while Irrbloss doesn't offer anything above or beyond its predecessor, this is still a strong album by a band dedicated to doing this right.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

http://www.yggdrasil-sweden.com/

Yggdrasil - Kvällningsvindar över Nordrönt Land (2007)

It seems to me Sweden's Yggdrasil is almost the perfect band for twilight idylls and festivals of the Elven folk, dancing their pagan lilts through the cold, rich woodlands of the seasons. I mean no insult by this whatsoever, for I refer to the Elves of Norse legend, of primal grace and forgotten, mythic beauty. No, this is not faerie metal in the negative sense that I generally loathe upon, but a real evocation of folklore. Kvällningsvindar över Nordrönt Land is the band's debut, with material culled from their two previous demos and re-recorded. It's a good thing they decided to honor these tracks and breathe them new life, because there is no reason songs of this quality should not have reached a larger audience.

Like their newer effort Vedergällning, this album is long on atmosphere, but where many pagan/folk metal bands clash at the crossroads of archaic instrumentation and black metal aggression, Yggdrasil makes it sound like the two were always unified, as they can flawlessly transition through moments of melodic, ripping guitars, violins and synthesizer swells, with a fiddle here, or mouth-harp twanging off there. The vocals are clean and forward, but they intone like dark bells hung from the trees of this ancient landscape. About the only thing I did not find necessary on the album were the female vocals or the 'shrieking' vocals, but these are few and far between and greatly outnumbered by the finer moments.

An hour of atavistic relaxation commences with "I Nordens Rike", from the 2003 demo of the same name, and its ambient sounds of sky mesh seamlessly into the developing guitar melodies before the chords crash forward into a lead like a thousand autumn leaves exploding as a steady breeze strikes the tree. The only issue here is the screaming vocals just before the 6:00 mark, which serve to do little else than annoy, sticking out like a sore thumb in an otherwise great track. "Kvällning Över Trolska landskap" transforms beautiful acoustics and a sad violin line into a thundering blitz of black momentum, though the real star is the following melody. "Frid" is a sullen, slower folk metal piece, and the 11 minute "Gryningstid" morphs from percussive guitar rhythms to glistening streams of melody, an interesting and fairly original style. "Nattens Vandare" once again uses muted with a percussive feel, but this is more of an Amorphis feel with some violins. Love the melodies in this track.

"I Nattens Timma" moves at a slow, drawling doom, as shining melodies cling to the broiling sequence of chords, and the vocals soar. "Vinter" is much the same pace, but with less of an upper end to the notes, and a little more of the gruffer vocals. Good acoustics, good mouth-harp, but the female vocals feel a little mediocre (though subtle). "Nordmark" is a blitzkrieg at first, of rather average pagan black metal, and the female vox later in the track are half tolerable. Which leaves the "Elfdance", or "Älvadansen", to finish out the record...with more female folk vocals, this time covering almost the entire track. In the beginning, they are restrained and catchy, but when Michelle Maass starts screaming later on, results may vary.

Kvällningsvindar över Nordrönt Land is, for the most part, a good album, but there are points at which it starts to unravel (largely through the female vox) and feel like an effort from one of the great many other, mediocre folk metal bands Europe is spewing like a geyser of ex-goths. The stronger tracks here have all the dense atmospheres and lush idylls of the following album Vedergällning, which is superior to this. But the debut sounds quite somber and romantic in an ancient forest fashion, and it's nice to have the demo material made 'official' rather than left to wallow in the dusk.

Highlights: I Nordens Rike, Frid, Gryningstid, I Nattens Timma

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

http://www.yggdrasil-sweden.com/

Yggdrasil - Vedergällning (2009)

Yggdrasil is a pagan/folk metal project involving members of the Swedish power metal act Broken Dagger, including Magnus Wohlfart (Nae'blis, Folkearth, etc). Vedergällning is their second full-length and pretty sure to please fans of the more subtle and graceful, melodic approach to this category. At its heart, Yggdrasil is a black metal band, but they perform the slower, carousing, mead horn brand of anthems infused with an excellent grasp of lilting melody that gives the album a lot of replay value.

The bands I'd offer by comparison would be Thyrfing and Moonsorrow, but Yggdrasil is a little less pomp and hammer than the former, and not quite as 'epic' or often as lengthy as the latter. Vedergällning is pleasant and powerful enough at 45 minutes. "Oskorei" leads off with some natural ambience into pianos and a driving blast beat which settles in like fog over the fjords. Once it slowed to its fist pumping Viking grandeur, and the beautiful cascade of melodies, I was hooked. Wohlfart's vocals are nothing special, the expected snarling throat, but they're well laid back into the mix of the album as if just another component of a tapestry. The band also makes use of soaring deep male chorus vocals to reasonable effect.

It's a winning formula. Title track "Vedergällning" is excellent, I love the flow of the melody and the breakdown into a sobering, grim yet glistening crawl. "Vitterdimmorna" is the longest track on the album, over 9 minutes and this is where I was most reminded of Moonsorrow. Slow, steady pulse branching into proud, beautiful melodies. "Ekot Av Skogens Sång" has a great groove to its rhythms, like a fleet of dragonships landed and committed to war. "Svälttider" yet again ensnares with its perfectly planned wall of melody, and the remainder of the album is consistently good.

The strengths of Vedergällning lay in its mix. Rather than attempt the bold, in your face style of folk metal (Finntroll, etc) it creates a lush environment suitable to its inherent mythology. The music of Yggdrasil arrives at you from a distance. A boreal Scandinavian woodland, an atavistic soundtrack to a forgotten but much beloved time. It's quite mesmerizing. I did feel as if the clean, deep chorus vocals happened a few times too many, but it's a minor nitpick and the band have created an outstanding sophomore effort that pagan/folk metal fans will simply devour.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]

http://www.yggdrasil-sweden.com/