Ragnarblackmane: Speaking of real metal, here is some Lumsk for those fellow fans of Folk metal. Beautifully haunting female vocals combined with expert musicianship and more nordic mythology than you can shake an oar at. They're obscure for reasons beyond my knowledge.
Lumsk's I trollhender from the album Åsmund Frægdegjevar I think it's cool that somebody is listening to this music right in the middle of the Pacific :-) Lumsk is a very good folk metal band, not exceptional, but very good. I followed them from the release of their first demo until their second album. Their first album Åsmund Frægdegjevar is their best one in my opinion.
Conceptually it is a very interesting album since the lyrics is based upon an old folk song which itself is based upon one of the old sagas. The story is about the Hero Åsmund who sets out to rescue the King of Ireland's sister from the trolls.
Many folk metal song lyrics are inspired by folk song\fairy tale supernatural elements or remnants of old paganism but they are usually written with the modern sentiment that the Christianity is bad and paganism good. On this album it is a bit different since Lumsk tries to stay as close to the original story as possible. The story seems to be set in the eve of the viking age as Christianity was spreading across Scandinavia. Since the song is written sometime later Christianity is obviously good, while the old paganism is bad. Christianity is represented by the hero
Åsmund while the trolls represent the dark forces of paganism. On "I Lytinne Två" where Åsmund challenges and kills the troll-hag Skomegyvri the refrain being sung is "Eg hev vori i dei kristne lando, Der folki kallar på gud, Eg e sterkar hell du" which means "I have been in the Christian lands where people are calling on (maybe praising or worshiping?) god. I am stronger than you." It seems like having converted to Christianity gives Åsmund a general (or specifically against paganism) advantage in battle.
I didn't like their second album "Troll" very much. But this was because of some of the lyrics which should not be a problem for those not versed in Norwegian. In theory the concept behind it should have been right up my alley, the lyrics deal with various creatures from Norwegian superstition or paganism and they were not written by the band but by a professional writer. But I found some of the lyrics cringe-worthy and stopped listening not long after I bought it. Listening on it now on Spotify it is not as bad as I remember but a lot worse than Åsmund Frægdegjevar. Musically it follows the same mix of metal, folk music and 70's rock.
They have released a third album as well "Det Vilde Kor" and this one should have much better lyrics as they have taken then from the famous Norwegian author Knut Hamsun.
If you like this type of melodic Scandinavian folk metal I would recommend you to check out Otyg and Storm if you have not already. Otyg is Swedish band fronted by Andreas Hedlund from Vintersorg. Otyg's songs deal mainly with various creatures from Scandinavian folklore like draugen, huldra and bäckahästen. They are not as varied musically as Lumsk but they employ many non-typical metal instruments like flute, fiddle and mouth harp.
Storm was a side project from Satyr from Satyricon and Fenriz from Darkthrone. They made one album called Nordavind. Most of the songs are traditional Norwegian songs but some have been changed lyrically. The modified and original lyrics are quite stupid with some (not entirely serious) extreme nationalism and Christian-bashing in them, but the whole album has a lot of brutish, quasi-folksy, Norwegian charm.
Otyg is available on Spotify while Storm is not.
