Ensiferum announce new album ‘Thalassic’

ENSIFERUM have announced a new album!

Titled Thalassic, the upcoming album from the Finnish folk metal band follows 2017’s Two Paths and is scheduled to be released in July this year, via Metal Blade Records.

The upcoming album was recorded and produced in Petrax and Sonic Pump Studios by Janne Joutsenniemi, who was involved on their albums Victory Songs (2007) and From Afar (2009). “We like to go to a studio when we have all the songs 99.9% ready so the producer’s main job is to kick our asses while we record,” explains bassist/vocalist Sami Hinkka. “Of course Janne Joutsenniemi is a world-class producer, and we asked his opinion if we were doubting any details. It was really a pleasure to work with him again, and I think this was one of the most easy-going studio sessions I have ever been part of. We are extremely happy with the result.”

Continuing to talk about the new album, Hinkaa says, “I think we managed to take another step ahead musically and we also utilized the best parts of our old sound. There are lots of ENSIFERUM‘s trademarks: beautiful folkish melodies, ass-kicking riffs, a nice mix of different vocals and great singalong choruses.” The addition of new keyboard player/lead clean vocalist Pekka Montin also “really raised the new songs to another level”, while Mikko P. Mustonen once again presided over the orchestrations, and violin virtuoso Lassi Logren recorded folk instruments on a few tracks.

The biggest difference separating Thalassic from the rest of the band’s catalogue comes from the fact that it’s the first of their albums to be built around a theme. “The idea of it started to brew in my mind when I was doing interviews for Two Paths and many journalists asked if it was a theme album, and I noticed that I was answering all the time that because of the way we compose it’s almost impossible to make a theme album. This really started to piss me off and the decision was made: the next album would have a theme. At that time, we already had a few songs almost ready for the next album, and I started to listen to the demos much more from the feeling aspect instead of analyzing them musically. For some reason, all of them took me to a seashore, and the theme was found: something related to sea or water. So I started to read about history, myths and legend around the world that had something to do with the theme, but even though all of the lyrics are obviously inspired by this, I tried my best to keep ENSIFERUM‘s heroic mentality in them. In the end, there were too many ideas for lyrics, because I didn’t set myself any boundaries – like all stories would have to be Nordic, etc, and one of my favourite songs on the album tells about Andromeda from Greek mythology. I can’t promise that this way of lyric-writing will be the future of ENSIFERUM, but at least we did this once.”

Alongside the announcement of the new album, the band have released the first song from the upcoming album; Rum, Women, Victory.

Watch the official lyric video for Rum, Women, Victory here: 

Also, you can view both the track list and artwork for the upcoming album below:

Track List: 

1. Seafarer’s Dream
2. Rum, Women, Victory
3. Andromeda
4. The Defence of the Sampo
5. Run from the Crushing Tide
6. For Sirens
7. One with the Sea
8. Midsummer Magic
9. Cold Northland (Väinämöinen Part III)
10. Merille Lahteva (Bonus Track)
11. I’ll Stay by Your Side (Bonus Track)

Thalassic is set for release on July 10th via Metal Blade Records.

For more information on ENSIFERUM like their official page on Facebook.