Neofolk Nykolaes

From the deep woods now emerges Birna, Wardruna’s sixth studio album.
Through his never resting dialogue with nature, main composer Einar Selvik has been searching for the voice of the bear. Birna - the she-bear in Old Norse - is a work of art dedicated to the warden of the forest, nature’s caretaker, and her battles here on earth. Slowly driven out of her habitat by modern day societies, she has entered a stage of permanent hibernation. As a result, the forest is gradually dying, longing for its pulse and heart - its shepherd. Birna calls for her return.

In the music of Forndom, the past breathes with a vitality that transcends time. “Moþir” is as complex as the deities it portrays, weaving together themes of fertility and loyalty, love and betrayal, light and shadow. It is an exploration of divine ambiguity, where the nurturing embrace of a mother can just as easily turn into the cold hand of inevitability.
Here, Ludvig Swärd strips away the modern trappings of synthesisers, embracing a purely acoustic sound. The music feels as though it has been carved from the very earth, born from instruments fashioned by hand and played with reverence for the ancient…

Varg Vikernes made his name as one of the Norwegian black metal scene's more notorious figures early on, involved not just with the extreme music of Mayhem and other black metal groundbreakers, but also with church burnings, murder, and time spent in prison for his crimes. This is all old news to anyone familiar with Vikernes and his one-man project Burzum, a musical entity that shifted from early black metal darkness into progressively more and more ambient territory. With 11th album The Ways of Yore, Vikernes continues the foray into European medieval music that he began with 2013's Sôl Austan, Mâní Vestan. The album's inherent gloom comes not from the burning hatred and isolation that fueled earlier Burzum albums, but conveys the same intensity through its use of chant and traditional instruments of early Norwegian folk music…

Varg Vikernes is once again wasting no time getting new music out into the world as Umskiptar is now the third album since his release from prison in 2009. While both Belus and Fallen were powerful examples of atmospheric black metal that harkened back to the early Burzum material, Umskiptar finds Vikernes moving away from that sound and diving into avant garde and Bathory styled viking metal.
That's not to say that there aren't some similarities here to the previous two releases. Varg likes to stretch out the atmospheric passages, sometimes for a tad too long, and the plodding tempos here on a few tracks, especially on "Alfadanz" sound a bit familiar…