Skálmöld - "Ýdalir"
Ýdalir is the sixth studio album from Icelandic Metal band Skálmöld. Skálmöld is categorized, primarily, in two specific metal genres: Folk Metal and Viking Metal. And yes, I’ll break that down.
We’ve covered Folk Metal before. It’s metal, but with folk stylings. This is usually hyper-specific to a culture. The Hu, for example, are Mongolian Folk Metal. Skálmöld’s folk stylings are specific to Iceland and their Nordic heritage. The name of the band comes from a historic era of strife and civil war in Iceland, and all of their songs are written in Icelandic. The folk elements of Skálmöld’s sound aren’t as strong as in other Folk Metal acts, though, as the band decided to just use three guitars instead of a variety of Icelandic folk instruments, as originally planned.
The Viking Metal elements, naturally, are married to the band’s conceptualization as a Folk Metal act. Iceland was settled by vikings, after all. Musically, though, Viking Metal is a bold and harsh genre. It is a derivative of Black Metal, Power Metal, and Nordic folk. Black Metal is a more extreme genre which embraces dark tones and harsh vocals, as the name suggests, and it, in turn, is a derivative of Speed Metal and Thrash Metal. So, ultimately, you get songs which will at points sound like sonic attacks with fast, aggressive riffs; but also have this chuggy, galloping pace which is strongly reminiscent of the glory days of Thrash and makes you want to bang your freakin’ head. And all of it is made more grand and epic by the Nordic folk melodies and the underlying power-chord-heavy harmonization. The vocals are a mix of clean and harsh, as all six members of the band are involved in vocals.
The album is also a strong concept album. And I’ve gone down a slew of rabbit holes to discover and verify all of this. The album’s name comes from a mythical realm, Ýdalir, which is only ever mentioned once, in passing, in the Poetic Edda, specifically in the Grímnismál. As I understand, there isn’t a lot that is known about what this place was believed to be, aside from which God ruled over it.
The band have, seemingly, used this as a jumping-off point to tell an epic story about this place and its Lord, Ullr. There are actually some very good translations of the first half of the album (not counting track 1, which is an instrumental) which provide a clear vision of what’s going on in tracks 2-5.1 Hopefully the translator will get the last four tracks worked up soon.
And I want to take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate that Ratotoskr, Yggdrasil’s resident squirrel, gets his own song here. As do each of the Nornir (the three Fates of Norse mythology).
The whole album is a ride, but "Verðandi", "Veðurfölnir", "Níðhöggur", and "Ullur" were the standout tracks. “Ullur” is the epic 11-minute closing track, and one of the songs where the folk influence really shows up the best.
If you’re looking for something to bang your head to, this one is a must.
Rating: Teal Blue
Note that this site doesn’t allow you to sort by album, so you’ll need to find the name of each song in the master list under the artist. You can use the search bar to have it limit the list to just songs from Ýdalir.