Quick question: what’s better than discovering a new band that have a lot in common with one of your favourite bands? Answer: discovering a new band that has a lot in common with at least two of your favourite bands, that’s what. I’m still not entirely sure what I was expecting when I agreed to review Dun Ringill, but it definitely wasn’t A Forest of Stars, Årabrot and Korpiklaani teaming up to produce a Nordic folk/doom crossover album. And for those of you familiar with those bands, that’s every bit as spectacular as it sounds.

Talking of spectacular, it’s an appropriate word to describe the scale, ambition and scope of not only Where the Old Gods Play itself, but wherever this project is going after this release, which is part – or rather act – one of at least two that we currently know of (Act 2 is slated for a 2024 release). Based on a film script developed by the band’s bassist and primary songwriter Patrik Andersson Winberg and teacher of religion and literature, Jonas Granath, this album (and subsequent albums in the same series) centres on a priest with a hidden agenda in Scotland in the early 1900s that. Now, the second of that sentence alone is already more backstory than most metal albums have (and I mean actual backstory, not the waffle that record companies cobble together about them). But wait. There’s more.

If you’re already familiar with Dun Ringill (and thus at least one step ahead of me), you probably know that they don’t exactly do anything by halves – by acts maybe, but not halves. They’ve also previously released an album called Library of Death, which I’m deeply disappointed in myself for not already knowing about, and will be my next stop after this. Formed by Patrik Andersson Winberg and Hans Lilja in 2017 in Sweden as a “dark and doomy project with Nordic folk influences”, Dun Ringill took shape during a year long hiatus of Winberg and Lilja’s previous band The Order of Israfel. This latest release is the opening skirmishes of a larger project that appears to be taking them into ever darker and doomier waters, with just enough folk, prog and somewhat psychedelic black influences to keep things moving. So not only is this a massively ambitious project in terms of the story being told, and the multiple albums that will eventually be involved in that, it’s also got a lot going on musically as well. It reminds me of a very particular type of album, that can be found in pretty much any genre, where you might not have known it existed an hour ago, but you very quickly realise that you did, in fact, need it in your life. I suspect most metalheads have encountered at least one of them: albums that fill a gap in your life that you didn’t know was there.

That’s kind of where I’m at with Dun Ringill at the time of writing – I have an existing appreciation for/love of all of the component parts here, but finding an album that has all of them going on at once, is quite an experience. From the filthy riffs, hooks, snark and timelessness of Årabrot and other noisy, unruly bands with folk influences such as Green Lung, to the whimsically creepy scene-setting of A Forest of Stars, to the darker, more twisted end of folk that brings to mind the famous murder ballads of Scottish, Irish and English traditions, to some straight up classic heavy metal, to the crushing, hypnotic doom elements that bring to mind any doom band you fancy inserting here, from My Dying Bride to Witchsorrow to Pallbearer.

Track one, Awakening, is aptly named. Waves and crying sea birds give way to bagpipes, before the first of many rolling riffs arrive, followed closely by a blend of clean and harsh vocals that intertwine over a tight, multi-layered sound that channels old school Maiden (especially with the hook in the chorus) amongst others. The clean vocals are slightly weaker than the harsh ones, but in a way that actually adds to the folky lifeblood of the track, rather than detracting from it – most folk songs aren’t sung by the Pavarottis of this world, after all. The Parrish carries on with more folk-singers-covering-a-doom-album vibes, and also somehow manages to sound like early Turisas in places (the slower, heavier, folkier end of Battle Metal specifically). And for those of you wondering where A Forest of Stars come in to my reckoning of this album, The Devil Wears A Papal Tiara is where – the title, the deliberately slightly discordant opening, the lyrics and the beat that isn’t quite where you expect it to be at any given moment? If A Forest of Stars ever make a doomy folk album, this is what it’ll sound like. If Årabrot and Korpiklaani collaborated on the lyrics and delivery, that is. Also, The Devil Wears A Papal Tiara is hands down one of the best track names I’ve seen in ages. Baptised In Fire starts out very Eleuvitiesque, and proceeds to sound like Årabrot circa Who Do You Love/Norwegian Gothic with more old school Maiden influences than you can shake a pint of Trooper ale at. Of all things that are going to stay with me from this album, the hook-laden riff that keeps popping up in Baptised In Fire is currently top of the list – it’s almost ludicrously simple, yet it’s more firmly lodged in my head than the words to Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.

Nathaniels Hymn kicks off with strings that sound almost synth-like, and then marches off in much the same vein as the last couple of tracks. The chorus is a glorious, slightly-off harmony that lends atmosphere to the proceedings surprisingly effectively – if I were being nitpicky (which I am, let’s be honest), the twiddly guitar solos don’t really fit the mood, however technically accomplished they may be. Blood of the Lord takes a while to get going, but when it does it’s a fairly straight piece of Maidenesque classic heavy metal – the vocals even sound like Brucie in various places – and while it’s accomplished, it’s missing a lot of the tangled web of influences that make the rest of the album so much fun to listen to. Also, there’s a very acidic recitation of various religious passages just past the halfway point, but trying to figure out what the speaker’s accent is keeps jolting me back to reality every time I hear it. Final track, The Last Supper, manages to circle back to the beginning of the album, while also marking a subtle shift in approach that is presumably leading up to Act 2. It also trails off fairly abruptly, one would assume for much the same reason.

So that’s Dun Ringill and Where The Old Gods Play Act 1. Not at all what I expected, but I enjoyed it enormously regardless. I’d normally mark an album like this down for feeling as unfinished and incomplete as it does, but that wouldn’t be fair given that it has been made clear that this is only the opening act of a much larger project. Which apart from some slightly weak vocals, out of place guitar solos, and that one track that sounds a little too much like 80’s Maiden, is my only real issue with this album – however well it’s done, it only makes so much sense on its own, because it’s meant to be listened to in the wider context, which we don’t have yet. Definitely looking forward to getting the rest of it and listening to this in context though.

(9/10 Ellie)

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https://dunringill.bandcamp.com/album/where-the-old-gods-play-act-1