Band:	Iotunn
Album:	Kinship
Style:	Melodic death metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	October 25, 2024
A review by:	musclassia

01. Kinship Elegiac
02. Mistland
03. Twilight
04. I Feel The Night
05. The Coming End
06. Iridescent Way
07. Earth To Sky
08. The Anguished Ethereal

2018 must be a year of mixed emotions for Jón Aldará fans; on the one hand, both bands he was already involved with at the time (Hamferð and Barren Earth) subsequently went on prolonged dry spells without an album, but on the flip side, he joined Iotunn and lit up their acclaimed debut Access All Worlds. 2024 has been kinder to these fans, as not only have Hamferð awoken from their slumber, but Iotunn have returned for round two.

Iotunn had released music before Aldará joined the band, but his recruitment not only saw a marked upgrade on the vocal front (with all respect to initial frontman Benjamin Jensen), but also coincided with substantial improvements on the songwriting front. Despite their Nordic origins, the progressive metal group arguably exhibited US power metal tendencies at times on The Wizard Falls, along with some occasional harsher touches, but Access All Worlds featured a revolutionized sound that injected more extremity and also a heightened sense of melody into lengthened, convoluted musical adventures. A style that could be concisely referred to as ‘progressive melodeath’ unsurprisingly swept the 2021 Metal Storm Awards in multiple categories, leaving expectations high for Kinship.

One matter that was the subject of some consternation with regard to Access All Worlds was its production, and specifically its mix being overcompressed and brick-walled. Truth be told, I’ve never been that sensitive to the negative effects of the loudness wars, so this isn’t something that’s ever really drawn my attention when listening to their debut; as such, my opinion on the production of Kinship may not be the most reliable, but I don’t have any major issues with the mix & master job by Jason Hansen, albeit there are perhaps some moments where significant melodies end up slightly muted in the mix, or the cymbals sound overloud. Nevertheless, the production of Kinship did not overly impact my opinion on the album either way.

Moving onto the music, and this second album from Iotunn is a substantial body of work at just under 70 minutes in length. What’s more, Kinship kicks off with its longest song, the 14-minute “Kinship Elegiac”. Following on from Access All Worlds, this song (and album) largely lean towards more melodic and bombastic sounds, emphasizing Aldará’s clean vocal ability while punctuating it with moments and passages of extremity. “Kinship Elegiac” explores those clean vocals in the absence of metallic instrumentation for a lengthy opening couple of minutes, but when the full band kicks in, that cosmic vibe from the debut is retained in the expansive keyboard-tinged tremolo soundscapes. The song incorporates melody in the form of exciting lead guitar motifs, cutting tremolo riffs and dazzling solos, while also keeping blast beats, rasps and Borknagarian riffs in the locker.

It's a song that’s prog with a capital P; the next couple of tracks on the album remain similarly explorative and multicompartmental, but also revisit the folk metal hints from the debut. In this instance, however, it’s not so much the typical Nordic folk sound as it is the work of Primordial that comes to mind in the slightly blackened opening stages of “Mistland” and “Twilight”. Beyond that opening, “Mistland” evolves into one of the strongest songs on Kinship, featuring some triumphant soaring clean vocal passages underpinned by rampant double bass percussion, a delicious extended guitar solo sequence in the middle, and a frenetic final few minutes.

It is in moments such as these that Iotunn unlock their full potential; for me, those moments are a bit too infrequent for me to embrace the band quite in the way that many others have. After “Mistland”, there’s a lot of very decent songs (having said that, I find the acoustic ballad “Iridescent Way” to be overlong, underdeveloped and dreary), but perhaps not too many standout moments. “Twilight” is one of the better tracks, with a bit of a Primordial-meets-Arcturus feel and a really nice guitar motif near the end, although the chorus doesn’t quite click for me. I’m also not entirely won over by the choral refrain of “Earth To Sky”; conversely, I do find that “I Feel The Night” and “The Coming End” hit the mark more successfully on that front.

Outside of the vocals, these tracks all have their virtues as far as the riffs, lead guitars, and overall arrangements are concerned, but perhaps there’s a slight overarching sameness to them. Closing song “The Anguished Ethereal” shakes things up a bit with a doomier approach in several sections that both offers a let-up for those feeling a bit overwhelmed and also accentuates the strengths of the faster, more vibrant parts of this track. As a result, I find this album finisher to be one of the standout cuts from a record that, while arguably not demanding one’s attention throughout, sustains enough of the charm and strengths of the debut to make for a worthy follow-up.