Last heard from with 2011′s Essence of Nine (review here), Colorado duo The Flight of Sleipnir will release their fourth album, Saga, on Feb. 15 through Eyes Like Snow. And in case you were wondering just how serious is the super-serious business they get up to, the tracklist is in Roman numerals. They also have their own runes. Yeah, it’s like that.

The news came in on the PR wire and it’s one more on an increasingly long list worth looking forward to. Dig it:

THE FLIGHT OF SLEIPNIR – Saga

“Saga” is the band’s 4th album and by now I think we can dispense with comparisons. The Flight Of Sleipnir have become their own reference – a fact to which a large and continuously growing fan base attests.

On “Saga” David & Clay have further refined what has become their very own style, a totally unique combination of Viking and Doom Metal with progessive elements, which they developed and improved with every release.

In this respect, the new album is a consequent continuation of “Essence Of Nine”, with its focus on acoustic parts, melodic guitar leads and clean vocals on the one hand, and raw Viking/Black Metal outbursts on the other, everything merged into a seamless whole. In short, an exciting and never boring or repetitive journey through a rough northern landscape, interspersed with relaxed nights around the campfire.

The album will first be released in A5-Digi (ltd. 1000) and CD jewel case, and in late Spring 2013 on double LP incl. 8-page booklet & A2 poster. Attentive fans may be able to grab one of the very limited Die Hard Editions we’ve planned for the A5-Digi and LP.

Tracklist:

I. Prologue
II. Reaffirmation
III. Reverence
IV. Harrowing Desperation
V. Heavy Rest The Chains Of The Damned
VI. Judgment
VII. Demise Carries With It A Song
VIII. The Mountain
IX. Hour Of Cessation
X. Remission
XI. Beneath Red Skies
XII. Epilogue

Taking on a host of aesthetics for their third genre-bending album since their 2007 inception, Colorado duo The Flight of Sleipnir weave their way through blackened folk metal and a progressive-edged doom on Essence of Nine. With the rich (if often used) lore of Norse mythology as their lyrical inspiration, multi-instrumentalists Clayton Cushman (guitar, vocals, bass, keys) and David Csicsely (drums, vocals, guitar) provide a varied approach across Essence of Nine’s eight cuts, flowing smoothly from song to song despite a relatively lo-fi production and managing to affect a dark but still emotionally-communicated atmosphere – that is, they’re not just angry and blasting out – with switches between early Opethian clean singing and more blackened forest screams.

Their second offering through German imprint Eyes Like Snow, it’s hard to get an immediate read on Essence of Nine from opener “Transcendence,” since the song starts with a doomed riff and groove that – were the tone fuzzier – would be pure stoner rock, and moves before long into an acoustic part before giving way, in turn, to far-back screams and heavier guitars and drums. The Flight of Sleipnir do a lot of back and forth between heavy and mellow, but in the context of the songs themselves, it’s not redundant, since Cushman and Csicsely keep what they’re actually playing so varied. “Transcendence” has some repetition of parts, but the chorus isn’t hooky in a songwriting sense, and if the start of the record makes anything clear, it’s that The Flight of Sleipnir are concerned more with stylistic complexity and the contrast between musical light and dark than pop catchiness.

Still, the track gives only a cursory glance at the diversity Essence of Nine carries with it. “Upon This Path We Tread,” which follows, provides even smoother transitions and an effective inclusion of acoustics à la modern Negura Bunget, and the album proceeds from there to unfold with the engaging riffs of “A Thousand Stones” and an increasingly developed atmosphere. There’s something definitively European about the sound The Flight of Sleipnir elicit and the imagery these songs provoke, but for its doom elements and effective balance between the metal and folk in folk metal, I wouldn’t call Essence of Nine redundant. Even on “As the Ashes Rise (The Embrace of Dusk),” which arguably accounts for some of Cushman and Csicsely’s most raging moments, that metallic indulgence is complemented in the second half of the song by an acoustic-led wistfulness that leads gorgeously into the 7:31 centerpiece, “Nine Worlds,” the high point of the album.

Read more »