MAY 23rd, 2024
TYR: BATTLE BALLADS
Review by: Yolanda Cota

I can honestly say I was pleasantly surprised with this album. Battle Ballads is Tyr’s fifth album and boy, does it deliver. As we can expect from “Viking Metal”, there is a lot of epicness and storytelling. The first track is “Hammered”. What an intro. It has a bit of an Amon Amarth feel with some Maynard James Keenan-esque vocals. The guitar solo was totally inspired by Kirk Hammett in my opinion. Definitely a solid introduction to the whole album.  The second track is “Unwandered Ways”. The intro to this song has a guitar riff that kind of sounds like something out of a pirate epic with the whole song being reminiscent of a pirate exhibition on the high seas. The whole time I was picturing a dark version of Pirates of the Caribbean. “Dragons Never Die” is the third track and my favorite song off this album. It’s a fast-paced song with a catchy guitar riff and intro. It almost has an Asian-influence feel, but you can totally picture Daenerys Targaryen flying through the air on Drogon out of Game of Thrones, taking everything out with a single breath, and burning asunder. The next notable song is the seventh track “Hangman”. I’m prone to like the faster songs and this one is just my taste. The bridge slows it down a little, but then it explodes into the chorus. It calms down a bit again with the breakdown and leads into the guitar solo. All-in-all, a great song with a killer guitar solo. The album ends on a somber, but epic ending with the tenth track “Causa Latronum Normannorum”. A fitting ending to this album. It’s almost as if I was to go see Flight of the Valkyrie with the soundtrack of a metal band. I thoroughly enjoyed this latest offering. Some of the songs did get a little redundant, in my opinion, but each were different in it’s own way. The ones mentioned above really stood out to me and I look forward to the next time Tyr graces us with their epic presence.