Boy, have I been waiting anxiously for this silver disc!
Since I got my greasy little hands on Danish folk metallers Svartsot’s four-track promo early last year and saw what they can do live, I’ve been wanting this here baby to be delivered on my doorstep. As you can tell from the rating, I’m not disappointed!
 

‘Ravnenes Saga’ is one of those discs that find it hard to leave the stereo system in my car (where I listen to most of my music these days) – you know, I think: ‘better put something else on now’, but once the first chords of opening track Gravøllet [The Wake] sound, Svartsot and I reach a silent agreement that we’ll go for another spin of their dark and groovy folk metal with the exquisite sounds of the whistle, mandolin and bodhran.

The songs Tvende Ravne, Jotunheimsfærden, Skønne Møer and Brages Bæger are by now all classics in my mind (they were the tracks of the promo), but the remaining eight songs add to the variation and show that there’s more to Svartsot.

There’s for example the bombastic, yet gentle melancholy of the instrumental Hedens Døtre which really shows that this band is capable of setting a mood – efficiently punctuated and contrasted by the ensuing thrash barrage of Festen.

The biggest stylistic surprise probably comes at the end with the funky clean guitars of the last track Havets Plage. Interesting by any measure, but it works quite nicely as a contrast to the efficient concrete-hard riffing on the rest of the album.
 

If you’re looking for a neck-breaker of an album with an twist of Scandinavian and Celtic folklore, this is definitely were you want to turn your wanting ears!