After a small delay Vansinnesvisor, the fourth full length album from Swedish Vikings Thyrfing, finally sees the light of day.
Thyrfing in the past continuously managed to slowly progress or change their sound a little with each new release without actually straying too far off their roots, and Vansinnesvisor is no exception to this rule.
The most striking change between this new one and their previous album Urkraft is that this time around everything is just a little bit darker and a lot more aggressive, as well as the fact that the keyboards are less dominant than in the past (causing that the guitar and keyboards compliment each perfectly). However, this luckily enough doesn't mean that the melody is nowhere to be found, as the band managed to maintain all of their usual trademarks that made them so special in the first place, there still is the usual amount of folky influences, the occasional Viking choir, typical keyboard passages and the switching between grunting and clean vocals. Lyrics as usual are mixed between Swedish and English, although the later are grossly outnumbered (only 2 out of 8 songs this time around), which isn't a problem at all really and just adds to the charm of Thyrfing.
All in all this is a very solid release which doesn't feature a single weak track (actually being their most even and balanced effort to date, although my personal favorite songs still remain Sweoland Conqueror off Urkraft and Going Berserk from their self-titled debut) and it would be about time that people took some more notice of this band, since I'm certain that we can expect a great deal more from them in years to come. My best advice is to go out, buy Vansinnesvisor, and if you haven't done so already get the rest of their back catalogue as well.