Band:	Týr
Album:	Valkyrja
Style:	Folk metal
Release date:	September 13, 2013
A review by:	R Lewis

01. Blood Of Heroes
02. Mare Of My Night
03. Hel Hath No Fury
04. The Lay Of Our Love [Feat. Liv Kristine]
05. Nation
06. Another Fallen Brother
07. Grindavísan
08. Into The Sky
09. Fánar Burtur Brandaljóð
10. Lady Of The Slain
11. Valkyrja
12. Where Eagles Dare [Iron Maiden cover] [bonus]
13. Cemetery Gates [Pantera cover] [bonus]

So, the Faroese Vikings are docking again on our shores. In the last years, their raids have become slightly less exciting, more easily predictable and pretty much similar from one to the other. Did the Valkyries bring a breath of fresh air?

No, they did not. Týr's seventh album is exactly what many expected, and probably some feared: a coherent yet appreciably unoriginal sequel to 2009's By The Light Of The Northern Star and 2011's The Lay Of Thrym. The band's trademarks - both positive and negative - have not been altered, but there are some small differences that help distinguish Valkyrja from its predecessors.

First of all, this album confirms the trend of "refining" the band's sound, once rough and wild, now clearer, more bombastic. This can be an up or a down depending on the listener's tastes, but it's undeniable that to achieve these results the band is sacrificing some mordant. Every now and then the music happens to sound somehow pre-packed; it seems to have lost its traditional, and appealing, unconventionality.

Moreover, it seems like the band is trying to enlarge its audience, trespassing it's frontiers and trying to appeal to fans of more unadventurous music: an example of this is "The Lay Of Our Love", a ballad that is maybe the nearest to a radio-friendly song that the band has ever composed. Also the physical appearance of the band itself has been "standardized": the mighty beards are gone, replaced by a generous dose of photo editing.

I hoped that one of the factors that would have made Valkyrja shine over the other albums would have been the change of drummer. In fact, former member Kári Streymoy left, and the album was recorded with Nile drum master George Kollias. That unfortunately didn't make the expected difference, probably because he had to play drum parts already written by someone else.

Valkyrja, however, isn't absolutely a bad album, in typical Týr tradition it is enriched with some masterpieces. The track "Another Fallen Brother" is ready to become one of the fan favorites during live performances. The title track shines above the others in effectiveness, complexity and epicness, and the band managed to assimilate perfectly the Iron Maiden and Pantera covers. However the album is weighted down by forgettable fillers, sadly some of which are the Faroese-language tracks; those usually shined as gems in the past but here lose most of their appeal.

The statement made during my Powerwolf Preachers Of The Night review can easily be extended to Týr: sometimes, lost in seas of experimentation, it's reassuring having bands to count on for which you already know what to expect.

Altogether I'd be sincerely surprised if Valkyrja ended up being the favorite of a long-time fan of Týr's discography, but it won't be their least favorite either. However this could be the album that introduces the band to a wide new range of supporters. Týr's latest effort is in fact their most accessible work to date, but still retains that charming, pugnacious soul.