Vengeful trickster fairies, a realm of impenetrable cold and boundless frost, a dragon gnawing away at the roots of the World Tree; Norse iconography is intense, and metal bands have known this at least since Led Zeppelin. Sweden’s Fejd, a folk metal group formed in 2001 from the folk duo Rimmerfors and the prog-thrash band Pathos,1 have been weaving Norse history and mythology into their acoustics-forward heavy metal for decades. They were last heard with 2016’s Trolldom, followed by a decade of inactivity as far as new music is concerned. But now, drummer Esko Sallow, keyboardist Lennart Specht, bassist Thomas Antonsson, vocalist/moraharpa player Niklas Rimmerfors, and multi-instrumentalist Patrik Rimmerfors2 have taken the Fejd banner to Nifelheim, the Norse realm of ice and an album steeped in mist-wrapped mystery. Fejd sing in Swedish and, being a Swiss-cheese-brained American, I can’t tell you if they capture their “Nordic melancholy” in lyricism. But can they musically?
“Folk metal” encompasses a lot of different sounds; the way Fejd do it, Nifelheim is folk, folk metal. Fejd’s approach immediately reminded me of The Hu’s early material, where amidst the great score of acoustic instrumentation, keyboards, and drums, not one distorted guitar appears. This is no issue. The lively, drone-noted strumming on “Edsvuren” and “Sköldborg”‘s Amon Amarthesque fighting riffs prove Fejd can bring the goods without them. Nifelheim’s acoustic soundscape—beautifully captured in a warm and dynamic mastering job—smells of sea salt on “Älvagrimmar” with its wind-swept majesty and “Strilja”‘s medieval jauntiness and Sgàile-like grandeur. On first listen, I was quickly and easily engrossed. Nifelheim doesn’t actually sound Nordic—like most Viking-y folk music these days, Fejd mostly play a hodgepodge of Asian and Eastern European instruments—but it nonetheless sounds like a dip into the primordial world.
Fejd use a lot of instruments on Nifelheim, and brother, you better believe they’re using them all in the same song. “Nidhögg” navigates between mouth harp,3 a plethora of strings, synthesizers, and group vocals while the title track opens to a cavalcade of drums, horns, and synchronized string riffs to bombastic effect. Nifelheim is just about always like this. But what’s crazy is that Nifelheim never sounds overly crowded. This owes partly to its aforementioned mix but also Fejd’s delicate songcraft, which sees pieces sliding in and out of the music in seamless, natural transitions. But what’s similarly baffling is that, though Fejd weave such big compositions together, Nifelheim still sounds kinda thin. This is in part due to a lack of low end, which is mostly handled by Salow kicking the dookie out of his drums, because Antonsson’s bass basically stands in the back of the mix sipping a beer mead. Regardless, in tying Nifelheim’s anachronistic musical identity together into a cohesive package, it’s safe to say these Swedes left no “Ø” uncrossed or “Ä” undotted.
But with how spirited Fejd’s musical identity is and how rich Nifelheim’s compositions can be, it’s a bit surprising how much steam the record loses by the end. Nifelheim keeps to a mid-pace throughout its runtime, and though Fejd can play briskly—Salow really lets loose on the kit when he wants to (“Edsvuren”)—the music nonetheless feels stuck in one speed. Similarly, I’d describe Rimmerfors’ vocals as workmanlike on Nifelheim, serving the music well but being too constrained to stand out or elevate it. Factored together, these two problems conspire to give Nifelheim a feeling of déjà vu. When closer “Svarta Tjärn” rolls out its big conclusion in hopes of a true Viking funeral, a track worthy of one in a vacuum, over-familiarity dims its flame to a serviceable campfire instead. Nifelheim is smooth sailing, but perhaps the trip would’ve been more memorable had Fejd challenged some choppier waters.
Nifelheim is a fun and expertly crafted album the whole way through, but a lack of exciting highs keeps me from giving a full-chested recommendation of it. Fans of folk metal will likely enjoy what Fejd offer on it, and genre diehards are likely to rate it more highly than I. I hear all the essence of a great album in Nifelheim, from Fejd’s expert chemistry to the record’s effortless fluidity. But I also hear the potential for something to really blow the roof off with Nifelheim gone unrealized. A few stronger hooks or up-tempo moments would’ve really gone a long way. But regardless, Nifelheim is a sound warship for Fejd to get back on the warpath with, and more than worthy of your consideration for listening. Skol!
There are many types of Chelsea Wolfe; the doom folk poet, the goth overlord, the master of all things hypnogogic. Wolfe’s covered a vast landscape of mystery and occultism over the past two decades, distorting genre lines into uniquely amorphous collections of songs. ‘The Dark’ is her newest and 9th of these. It’s not her loudest, heaviest or most rustic. It is however one of her boldest. With ‘The Dark’, Wolfe becomes the unashamed songwriter that her previous albums have always hinted towards. By minimising the historically all-consuming components of her music – like the layers of distortion on ‘Abyss’ and the lo-fi scuzz of ‘The Grime and the Glow’ – Wolfe’s voice sounds bullishly stark. ‘The Dark’ is thus the closest there’s ever been to Wolfe the singer-songwriter. It’s also a high watermark for Wolfe the storyteller.
The Californian has described the album as a love letter to the dark. This may sound grim but it’s strangely charming too. Yes, the darkness can be a metaphor for the emotional nadirs of life, but it is also where resilience lies. This is best explained by Wolfe herself via the title track’s gentle defiance. Keen to imbue the darkness with a sense of renaissance, Wolf has developed a newfound positivity. “Seeds grow in the darkness/our love glows in the darkness”, she sings. It’s a striking viewpoint – newfound fortitude is obtained only when at our weakest. Wolfe’s vocals support this further, with her sounding both weathered and imperious.
Her voice is a focal point throughout ‘The Dark’. In near-conversational speak, opener ‘Cold’ has Wolfe conversing with someone (or something) that she fears, but from whose grasp she escapes. She’s not running away though, but rather “running back home” in an endeavour to discover “who I am without you”. The subject of Wolfe’s address is ambiguous but never impersonal. Rather, it’s surprisingly relatable, making ‘Cold’ one of Wolfe’s most accessible songs to date.
This goes for the rest of ‘The Dark’ too. While lacking the spooky crunch of Wolfe’s most revered albums, ‘The Dark’ may become a future entry point for the unconverted.
There nonetheless remains enough of an eerie allure to keep Wolfe loosely tethered to her musical roots. ‘Turn the Key’ opens with grandly strummed guitars, sounding like the strings are hanging by a thread, as if precariously perched upon the instrument. Wolfe’s tendency towards the ghostly is also present, evidenced through her Kate Bush-esque head voice that anchors the chorus to ‘Seethe’ with a crisp breathiness. The song’s final moments dissolve structure, making way instead for atmosphere. While emotionally warm, much of the album feels instrumentally cold as a result of this penchant for ambience, as gales of sound amplify the music’s intensity.
‘The Dark’ is Wolfe at her most accessible but she remains capricious. ‘Death Is Not the End’ is a tale of two Wolfe’s. The acoustic whisperer conducts the first half before the distorted warrior battles through the second, the yin and the yang of Wolfe’s musical palette. The muscular grandeur of the song is potent. It also carries an inherent finality. So much so that when ‘Dancer in the Sky’ follows – with its watery pianos and icicles of pizzicato strings – it feels less of a finale and more the end credits. Its group-sung chorus instils the song with something of a Broadway feel too. The result is less of a sprint and more of a stumble to the finish line, but Wolfes make it out of ‘The Dark’ in anthemic style all the same.
The album is nonetheless Wolfe, yet again at her most conceptually consummate. Her paean to the darkness is captivating, but it’s the enchantment of Wolfe herself that ensures an ember of light has us drifting through ‘The Dark’.
As Motionless In White hit 20, we find out how they’ve evolved from metalcore wannabes to an arena band who are headlining Bloodstock next year – and it’s partly down to the determination of their only original member, frontman Chris Motionless.
In our emotional interview, Chris reveals the highs and lows of their journey so far, why making new album Decades took four years, and how it was the closest he’s ever come to walking away from the band.
“I ground myself to the bone for this record,” he says. “I was going into these toxic cycles of workaholism and just burnt myself out. It took a little bit of my passion away, because it felt like a job for the first time, so I definitely wanted to walk away and come back to it. That’s part of why it took so long.”
We also go inside Ghost’s massive new concert movie, 2 Big To Rig. Tobias Forge tells us about how they captured the epic Skeletour stage show, the unfortunate incident that nearly derailed it, and his “extracurricular” future plans.
Elsewhere, Mastodon open up about the death of guitarist Brent Hinds, just months after he split from the band. They explain why they’re moving forwards with new album Marrow Deep, and a brand new outlook.
Zoltan Bathory gets The Hammer Interview treatment, explaining how he arrived in the US with little more than a Hungarian-English dictionary, braving cockroaches and judo throws to steer Five Finger Death Punch to the top.
Meanwhile, seven years on from his throat cancer diagnosis, Dave Mustaine revisits his journey in an exclusive interview and an extract from his new book, In My Darkest Hour.
Green Lung take us on a tour of London’s graveyards and occult hotspots, Halestorm power couple Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger tackle your questions about love, keytars and… killer farts?! And Snot explain why they’re back in the studio, almost 30 years after the tragic death of frontman Lynn Strait.
Sleep Theory’s Cullen Moore shares his soulful playlist, Mudvayne/Hellyeah veteran Chad Grey delivers the lessons he learned from hanging out with a young Slipknot and meeting James Hetfield, and Godsmack give us the inside story of their blockbuster anthem, I Stand Alone. Plus, we meet Decessus, the Chilean death metal band led by a beauty queen.
All this, along with Eddfest, Metallica, Bring Me The Horizon, Sigh, Rory, System Of A Down, Acid Bath, Duff McKagan and much, much more.
Twin Atlantic have shared a new track called ‘Supersweetness’, written with vocalist Sam McTrusty’s family firmly in mind.
Musically, it is classic Twin. Urgent, vibrant and bristling with heart and soul from beginning to end. And dig a little deeper and you will find that it is another piece of heartfelt honesty that is coming to define the band’s new record, but this time with a sweeter edge. Written about how much he loves his daughters, with them even providing backing vocals, it is Sam pushing the ante: even though life can throw shit your way, it can also deliver pure diamonds.
As Sam beautifully puts it,“Every song is a love song really, but this one is about the bittersweet feeling of adoring my children until the point where it makes me feel ill.”
The song is set to appear on the band’s upcoming full-length ‘Separation From The Animals’, which will be released on October 02 via Dance To The Radio.
Sam had this to say about what has inspired much of the honesty that defines the album:
“I’m from a family that’s fairly divided, so I’ve always been passed about from when I was six-months-old. It’s all I’ve ever known. As you grow up, you start to view life through a different lens – especially the whole struggle of going from boy to man. My experience of that is particularly painful, emotional and confusing. But because it seemed normal at the time, it didn’t really hit me until I found my tribe, my people, my band. My entire adult life is meant to have been looking ahead but my personal life is always looking back. That baggage is basically what the whole band is about.”
It will also feature ‘In Your Eyes’, which is utterly beautiful and sounds like this:
The band is heading out on tour this Autumn, with support from The Xcerts.
Review: Warren Haynes – Dreams & Songs: A Symphonic Journey Provogue Records – September 18th, 2026 Reviewer – Chris O’Connor There are musicians who seem to spend their careers perpetually busy, and then there is Warren Haynes. Guitarist and vocalist extraordinaire, songwriter, producer and seemingly tireless musical workaholic, Haynes has spent decades carving out a career […]
Vengeful trickster fairies, a realm of impenetrable cold and boundless frost, a dragon gnawing away at the roots of the World Tree; Norse iconography is intense, and metal bands have known this at least since 
