Colorado’s The Flight of Sleipnir has maintained a consistent but eclectic sound for nearly fifteen years, mixing Doom and Atmospheric Black Metal with elements of Folk and Prog Rock in a way that should sit well with fans of Agalloch. Their seventh album mostly adheres to this genre blend and boasts the fuller production that was last seen on 2017’s Skadi. However, Eventide (Eisenwald) manages to tweak the formula as those Blackened elements seem to be upfront than before.
Shadow Woods Metal Fest will be happening on September 25-27, 2015 in Fannettsburg, PA in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. Artists taking part on the fest include:
Anagnorisis (Louisville, KY – black metal)
Anicon (New York, NY – black metal)
Ashagal (New Hope, PA – ritual folk)
Bridesmaid (Columbus, OH – instrumental doom-sludge)
Cladonia Rangiferina (VA – ritual black metal, doom, acid rock)
Dendritic Arbor (Pittsburgh, PA – black metal / powerviolence)
Destroying Angel (Philadelphia, PA – folk music for exorcisms)
Dreadlords (Philadelphia, PA – ritual black metal blues)
Dweller In The Valley (Frederick, MD – black, death, doom)
Existentium (Baltimore, MD – melodic technical death metal)
Falls of Rauros (Portland, ME – folk/atmospheric black metal)
Fin (Chicago, IL – black metal; unsigned)
Heavy Temple (Philadelphia, PA – psychedelic doom)
Hivelords (Philadelphia, PA – experimental psychedelic black doom)
Immortal Bird (Chicago, IL – black/death metal)
Iron Man (MD – doom metal/heavy rock)
Menace Ruine (Montreal, QC – avant-garde drone black metal)
Midnight (Cleveland, Ohio – black heavy metal)
Molasses Barge (Pittsburgh, PA – traditional doom metal)
Occultation (New York, NY – doom metal)
Oneirogen (New York, NY – dark, doom, drone)
Psalm Zero (New York, NY – experimental black doom)
Sentience (Woodland Park, NJ – death metal)
Slagstorm (Hagerstown, MD – prehistoric doom thrash)
Snakefeast (Baltimore, MD – jazz metal sludge)
Stone Breath (Red Lion, PA – experimental folk)
The Black Moriah (Dallas/Fort Worth, TX – Western occult black/thrash)
The Day of the Beast (Virginia Beach, VA – blackened death metal)
The Expanding Man (Baltimore, MD – solo improvisational electronic soundscapes)
The Flight of Sleipnir (Denver, CO – black metal)
The Owls Are Not What They Seem (York, PA – experimental ritual soundscapes)
Tyrant’s Hand (Baltimore, MD – deathened black metal)
Unsacred (Richmond, VA – savage black metal)
Velnias (Denver, CO – blackened folk/doom metal)
Wormreich (Huntsville, AL & Nashville, TN – black metal)
ZUD (Portland, ME – bluesy outlaw black metal)
Watch the trailer for the fest below.
Shadows Woods Metal Fest on Facebook
Shadows Woods Metal Fest on YouTube
I’ve been promising myself I’d check out Coloradoan duo The Flight of Sleipnir for some time and latest album V. (Napalm) points out just how criminal my tardiness has been. Opener ‘Headwinds’ starts out all ‘Planet Caravan’ with gently warbling vocals drifting through dreamy psychedelia. Suddenly, emerging hostile screams escort mellow leads through bristling anger, an anger which is subdued somewhat by a mix favouring the moaning harmony. The ensuing ‘Sidereal Course’, a doom-laden Simon and Garfunkel meets Jefferson Airplane, is graced with a growling riff and brief explosions of fire and brutality, a ferocity that adds violence to the core feel, which has a real air of 70s Americana about it.
It’s a shame the pummeling drums and rhythms are frequently cocooned in a mono-style production; the desolate hostility of ‘The Casting’ dwarfed by a delicious, ephemeral lead sequence. The creativity here, however, is immense with ‘…Casting’s’ riffs lending a frosted black edge to a reflective folk-rock pace which is graced by seriously emotive tones, while ‘Nothing Stands Obscured’ blends a maudlin Haight-Ashbury vibe with London Grammar-style wistfulness before a stratosphere-rending, post-black conclusion. The easy, lilting harmonies of ‘Gullveig’ splinter on the rocks of a crashing riff and icy screams, an acoustic-infused folky Floyd meeting a harrowing mournful edge, in a marriage of beauty and acrid bitterness that sums up the album as a whole. ‘Archaic Rites’ has an indie female vocal ghosting over a gently veering undercurrent, augmented by a tasty hippy flute solo, a snarling riff and hypnotic oscillations closing an affecting track, whilst a lazy yet impassioned blackened groove is speared by truly spectacular lead work on closer ‘Beacon In Black Horizon’, David Csicsely‘s impressive drums quietly dictatorial, the eerie coda a lament to a fallen chieftain.
The differing elements of ‘…Horizon’ epitomise an album with feet in so many pies that it aurally represents the eight-legged beast the band is named after. As legs connect the horse’s hooves with one body so organically, so this duo melds its various strands into a belonging whole; to an inventive tour de force and an essential experience.
8.5/10
The Flight of Sleipnir on Facebook
PAUL QUINN