Lore

Don't let that Electric Wizard or The Sword-like cover art and font lettering on the album cover fool you, this album is not true stoner/doom metal. There's a guitar solo in the first song (and in a couple other places too) that is pretty doom metal-ish but that's about it as Lore by The Flight of Sleipnir is more a down tempo-ed progressive folk rock/metal album that draws strong influence from High on Fire, Ulver, Moonsorrow and latter Enslaved..with a catch. That's a pretty interesting draw and it works. That being said, a case could be made that it does its own "stoner" doom thing in that its colorful epic atmosphere kind of makes you feel stoned by itself which is pretty cool. So maybe that's where a doom label could be assigned. It's a dreamy and meditative work exploring historical Norse legends. The acoustic melodies are beautiful and the presentation is coherent. The dirgeful passages and transitions flow admirably in some songs but stumble painfully in a couple others.

I think the drumming on this album is rather lacking. It's far too jazz skiff oriented in many places. There's an instrumental song-for example- called Asgardreid where I decided that I didn't care for this choice of drumming style found. The mitigating instance on the album though would be on Fenrisulfr. The actual hits are still pretty weak but the beats have the authority that the epic song requires.

As I said, I was laying down taking this album in like a magical herb and it relaxed me. That is, the album was sounding very fine and trippy until Man Will Spare Another came on. I immediately rose up and had to restrain myself from grabbing the handset on the nightstand to dial up the Opeth police. Yeah, the song was quite a buzzkill. It sounded like the band just got bored all of the sudden and decided to break into an impromptu of My Arms, Your Hearse. Despite some faint death growl layered on in the track, it's only in the progressive wankery pacing of the riffs but that's enough. The song threw a serious wrench into the rhythm and mojo that the record had going for itself.

The Flight of Sleipnir is a new band and aside from a few of this album's flaws I can say that I am interested to hear more from this project. It swayed me with its ambiance and its own interpretation of stoner doom that has King Crimson guitar passages. I'll be keeping tabs on this band.