Well, I have found the black metal record of the year. It's as simple as that, audacious, daring, stunning and simply genre breaking, With an album title I can't spell without copy/paste and a band name I can't pronounce, yet just reading the promo material for this record told me all I need to know. At 81 minutes long this entire record is sung in Old Norse-Icelandic with added Skaldic stanzas depicting the brutality of life, and the conversion in Iceland around the year 1000. It's as if someone tailored a record exactly to my tastes.
The thing is though, with Aldafǫðr ok munka dróttinn the band do something that feels natural. While oftentimes violins and chants can come across as over the top and pretentious Árstíðir lífsins manage to make it flow nicely. There is a sense of the sublime that dominates this record, you feel yourself falling into a unique soundworld and it is impossible to deny the majesty of this band. From the initial chants, to the viking metal progressions and utterly magical attack, this band have managed to put together something that will break your brain and require far too many listens to fully understand, it's simply that good.
It gets better, Árstíðir lífsins actually have a few other albums out, so once you've fully explored the adventure put together on Aldafǫðr ok munka dróttinn you can go explore the rest of their very distinctive approach to pagan metal. These guys are proving the eternal majesty of a genre that most cast aside. This is a band who promise to transcend metal and maybe even change the world, taking tried and true formulas they bring the music to its logical extreme and give me a sense of hope for the future honor of the pagan gods.
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