Review by Sonny for Árstíðir Lifsins - Saga á tveim tungum II: Eigi fjǫll né firðir (2020)

This second part of Árstíðir Lifsins' Saga á tveim tungum could be accused by some (although not me) of failing to grab the listener's attention out of the gate. It starts off at a gentle pace with the first two tracks, opener Ek býð þik velkominn being a folky acoustic song and second track, Bróðir, var þat þín hǫnd, being an even more ephemeral ambient number, both songs utilising whispery spoken vocals. So by the time Sem járnklær nætr dragask nærri kicks in we are ten minutes into the album and if it's an all-out pummelling black metal assault you've been waiting for, then I gotta say, your patience will have been well rewarded at this point. After the initial, possibly overplayed, slow build the album is actually paced very nicely with a balance between the folk-tinged parts, the frenzied blasting and some great medium-paced, epic-sounding viking metal, all of which makes the album as a whole really sound like a mighty saga told by tribal skalds around a roaring fire under the Northern Lights.

If you thought the album got off to a slow start, the finale is spectacular as the tribal ambience of penultimate track, Um nóttu, mér dreymir þursa þjóðar sjǫt brennandi, gives way to the epic seventeen minutes of the simply stunning closer, Ek sá halr at Hóars veðri hǫsvan serk Hrísgrísnis bar, a song to stir the blood and speak to some deep-rooted ancestral part of the human psyche that is drawn to those ancient tales of blood and fire, stories of legendary deeds and mighty heroes and the crashing of waves against a longship hull.

My only regret is that I am unable to understand the words, so the actual content of the album's saga is sadly lost on me, although the intention is more than clear and I can fill in the gaps with imagination.