Týr announce new album ‘Battle Ballads’
TÝR have announced a new album!
Titled Battle Ballads, the upcoming album from the Faroe Islands-based folk metal band is the follow-up to 2019’s Hel, and is scheduled to be released in April this year, via Metal Blade Records.
“There’s a reason classical music is called classical,” frontman Heri Joensen says. “It’s the classical way of doing it. And it creates these epic sounds that fit in perfectly with the kind of metal we do in TÝR. So, there’s full orchestration on all of the new songs.”
“There are definitely two versions of a ballad,” he adds. “A lot of people think of hair metal, when they think of ballads. We are looking at ballads here in the Medieval sense. Apart from a couple of softer parts on the album, this is very much straight heavy metal with some folk and classical influences. I’m not sure what exactly one would call it – power metal, Viking metal, folk metal. It still fits in very much with what we do, only it feels bigger and more like these big soundscapes.”
As much as TÝR would have liked to write, rehearse, and record with a symphony, schedule conflicts made it impossible to have the band and classical musicians to be in the same place at the same time. With Joensen at the helm, they wrote ten songs for Battle Ballads, then the bandleader sent the compositions to a Danish colleague Lars Winther living in England, who added the orchestral samples, paying close attention to the tone and tempo of the songs so the violins, violas, cellos, woodwinds, and horns fit complimented the traditional rock instruments. When the samples were all in place so TÝR sent the album to veteran producer Jacob Hansen [VOLBEAT, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, AMARANTHE] in Denmark to put together the final mix.
Alongside the announcement of the new album, the band have released a new music video for a new song lifted from the upcoming album; Axes. Speaking about the new song, Joensen says, “Axes starts with a battle horn followed by a fast melodic and symphonic guitar riff introducing the progression and main theme of the song. Game Of Thrones-ish lyrics of gory and glorified hand-to-hand battle of Viking times, told from a first-person perspective. The verse is slow and heavy with a gritty, yet theatrical and melodic voice. The chorus is fast with a singalong choir, alternating vocally between intricate and brutally simple phrasings. It’s a short face-melting metal song based on a single melodic idea.”
Watch the official music video for Axes here:
Also, you can view both the track list and artwork for the upcoming new album below:
Track List:
1. Hammered
2. Unwandered Ways
3. Dragons Never Die
4. Row
5. Torkils Døtur
6. Vælkomnir Føroyingar
7. Hangman
8. Axes
9. Battle Ballad
10. Causa Latronum Normannorum
Battle Ballads is set for release on April 12th via Metal Blade Records. Pre-orders are available now and can be purchased here.
For more information on TÝR like their official page on Facebook.
