Spain, a jewel of Europe. Steeped in history and culture. The food, the music and dancing and home to STEIGNYR, the five-piece Folk Metal band having recently released their fifth studio album "The Legacy Of Wyrd". The artwork of shows a woman standing before the Wyrd rune, simple and effective.

Opening the album is "Prologue" including a spoken word introduction, before the instrumental builds and builds before "Mendo" flits into focus, the gentle vocals contrasting the harsh growls in a beautiful harmony. The sections flow seamlessly, the guitar break is delightful and everything just feels... natural, if you get what I mean? It's a fantastic introduction into the album and I look forward into seeing where this goes. The titular "The Legacy Of Wyrd" is very much a silky and smooth woven piece that is graceful and elegant, like the Wyrd, it is flowing and the instrumentals intertwine with the vocals to create this absolutely beautiful musical tapestry.

"Travelers" comes pounding in, with a much more prevalent Power Metal feel, foot stomping and steadfast it just really is quite a solid track that does the album justice. Whilst it builds to an intense and breathless finish, it then slowly folds into "Immortal Family". The introduction to this track is just hypnotic, it reminded me of being home on the Northumberland coast, a crisp chilly morning and the mist laying low on the fields and moors. But, for me, that is where the magic ends for this track. It bursts to life, full bloodied and aggressive, in some mish-mash of driving rhythms and smoother groovy sections, personally I would have quite enjoyed a softer track that had built on the original motif; whilst there are flickers of this, they just seem a little too far between.

"The Giant Pillar Of Rock" just instantly grabs my attention, that powerful running guitar over the acoustics are the perfect complement to one another. But again, there just seems to be a mismatch of styles. By that, I'm looking mainly toward the drum line, there are times at the start that see a frenzied and, what felt like, an out of time drum tracking that detracted my attention. This certainly feels like a track that sees the drum as a focal point, and on the whole Zelther absolutely nails it, there just seems to be one moment of madness at the beginning.

"Aftermath" is this five-minute epic instrumental that just delivers punching and hard hitting music from the word go. It rolls out into another light instrumental, "Epilogue" and spoken word piece that just takes the album out with peace, serenity and calm.

Overall, another great album from STEIGNYR. The tracks are solid, a few little bumps in the road that I wasn't too sure about personally, but I am sure that there is reason to what was going on. Fans of ELUVEITIE be sure to check out this outstanding track.