Three things that rarely – if ever – fail to at least pique my interest when it comes to music are, in now particular order: cool band name, cool concept, and cool album names. These weaknesses are how I originally found bands like A Forest of Stars (cool name/concept), Evil Scarecrow (cool band/album name) and even Alcest (all of the above), so it generally hasn’t steered me far wrong in the past. On first impressions SIG:AR:TYR fell into at least two of those categories (cool band/album name), but then I realised there was a cool concept involved as well, and it’s pagan metal with atmospheric, folky bits. So we’re actually in “all of the above” territory along with Alcest, which is fitting given that I’m reviewing their new album next week.
At this point, the more I learn about this band, the more I love the whole thing. And that’s before I’ve even listened to anything.
Cool band name: check. SIG, AR and TYR are taken from the world of fantasy author Michael Moorcroft, and are the three fundamental things that have to be maintained for the world to function, represented by runic letters. SIG represents fire and chaos, AR represents balance, and TYR represents ice and law. The eternal battle is between fire and ice, death and birth, and the only way forward is balance, only make it a metal album. There is more to this bit, but I’ve already gone down a sizeable rabbit hole at this point.
Cool concept: check. See above, by way of a sound self-described as “[a] unique blend of epic pagan metal and blackened traditional metal, “Citadel of Stars” is both a mournful dirge for a dying age, and a hopeful glimpse into a rebirth among the stars”. Not to mention: “weaving the past, present, and future into a landmark release that echoes the epic themes spanning 20 years of SIG:AR:TYR’s musical legacy”.
Cool album name: I mean, it’s literally called Citadel of Stars?
Also, if you’re trying to work out where you’ve seen the album art before, it’s Independence Day.
[Honestly at this point I’m almost afraid to listen to it, because I don’t know if my self-image will ever recover if I don’t like an album that ticks so many of my boxes.]
And so, it begins. With a droning, doomy, textured intro full of nuances that gradually become clearer, before quietly dropping into and through multiple genres, including traditional heavy metal, something almost but not quite doom, some black metal elements, something vaguely post-y, and some very lively guitar solo work that doesn’t seem to match the energy of anything that’s come before it. I mention both doom and post because while it leans more towards doom, it’s somehow doom without the crushing weight behind it that usually sets the genre apart. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does put it closer to post in places than doom. For the most part, it’s good, but I have increasingly little idea what’s going on as this track continues. The second track, Beyond the Stars Unknown carries on in a similar vein, presenting an…unusual mix of genres all happening at once. There’s a very traditional heavy metal chug in the background for most of it, with some rough, blackened edges howling over the top in a way that puts it squarely at the more theatrical end of black, and guitar solo bits that I can only describe as “powerish”. I don’t dislike it, but it’s far more like a stolid trad. metal outfit (with an overly enthusiastic power metal guitarist) covering old school Cradle than it has any business being based on the aforementioned self-description. In particular, the chugging combined with the harsh vocals reminds me forcibly of Thirteen Autumns and A Widow (which has an equally compulsive urgency, even in the slower passages), which is by no means an insult, but not a comparison I thought I’d be making in this review. But then it goes off into the powerish guitars towards the end again, and thus far they’re probably my least favourite part of what’s happening here.
The Blood That Came Before You leans more into the blacker elements, albeit again with the classic heavy metal sound still there in the background, which creates a slightly odd issue. All the usual hallmarks of black/blackened are present, but the overall effect is too clean, too polished to really be either. Also, the guitar interludes haven’t really been anything but out of place so far, but they’re particularly intrusive on this track.
Then, as albums like this are wont to do, the title track Citadel of Stars goes off down a completely different road, with pretty, acoustic guitar, diaphanous melodies, something reasonably close to outright folk (not unreasonable, given that SIG:AR:TYR started off in the world of acoustic ambient, back in 2003), and absolutely none of the bits that have appeared in the previous tracks.
Ascending the Stellar Throne then departs from that folky interlude and strides confidently off in the direction of…a blackened post/doom outfit trying to sound like Iron Maiden? This is one of the most conventional tracks on here, in the sense of it’s the easiest to work out what’s going on here, but honestly that’s probably the one and only time I’ll use the word “conventional” to describe this album. This track is mildly notable as the only one so far that the OTT guitars don’t stick out like a sore thumb. I Sail On, Eternal, betrays no small influence from the deathy end of black metal, and sounds like the aforementioned blackened post/doom act covering something involving Fenriz, but still with that classic metal undertone and the guitar work that sounds like it’s from another album entirely.
So, here’s where I am thus far. The combination of black, doom, post, classic trad. metal and the occasional folky bit is a bit mad, but I actually quite like it. The heavy metal chugging away underneath howls straight out of the void, layered with something that wafts languidly between doom and folk, just straight up shouldn’t work, and frankly it barely does here, and yet I love it. It’s endearingly bonkers, like that cousin/uncle/friend we’ve all got, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, but is no less charmingly unhinged for it.
Who Will Guide Me Now is another slower interlude, but less straight folky and more borderline prog. It’s lovely, but maybe not the strongest track on here. From The Land of the North then abandons all blackened/doomy/posty ambitions, and sounds like it could slot into any one of a dozen Maiden albums, albeit with slightly harsher vocals than our man Brucie generally goes for. It’s somewhere between 2 Minutes to Midnight and Judas Be My Guide if you need a specific reference for that. The guitar work is more restrained here, and thus fits into the track far better – the earlier tracks would have benefited enormously from a similar approach to the solos.
The final epic, Where the Sun Never Sets, returns to the beginning (which an awful lot of albums are doing these days), with the rolling, textured drone leading the way, while the component parts gradually unfurl the further you go on. Then we get the delicate acoustic guitar picking its way across the much heavier soundscape rolling restlessly underneath it, a combination that I won’t pretend I’m not an absolute sucker for. [I wholeheartedly recommend The River – Hollow Full of Hope, one of the best albums I reviewed in 2023, for anyone with similar weaknesses.]
And so, Citadel of Stars meanders to its end point, with the last five minutes of the final track feeling like a gentle, scenic tour of all the many and varied genres and influences that have featured in the rest of the album. It eventually fades out with a thudding drum beat that almost feels like the album as a whole has sort of wandered off into the distance, taking all of its joyful chaos with it. (Interestingly, Korpiklaani’s latest album ended on an almost identical vibe, despite being a very different album musically.)
So there we have it. I have thoughts about some of it, like I would’ve preferred the doomy elements to be more clearly doomy, or more clearly post-y, the power metal guitar solos just don’t really fit, which is saying something given how many other disparate elements do fit in here, and seamlessly at that, and the blackened edge could do with being just a bit rougher. It is, after all, the production values that really define black metal when you strip away all the conventions. Also, the description given of “epic pagan metal and blackened traditional metal” is both accurate and also not. I imagined many things when faced with that description, and none of them were like this. It’s one of those descriptions where a lot of the components of it mean different enough things to people, that it’s hard to accurately picture a band’s sound based on a description like this. Which isn’t necessarily a criticism, more an observation that it’s a little vaguer than it could be in terms of describing SIG:AR:TYR’s sound.
The other minor issue that I have is that there’s so much going on here musically (and ultimately that’s the bit I really enjoy, as opposed to lyrics and subject matter), that while I’m aware that there’s a story being told here, I found myself far more interested in the music than the storytelling aspect. Maybe that’ll come out more on repeated listens, I don’t know, but for now it didn’t really register with me all that much.
All of that said however, I still thoroughly enjoyed this album. It’s a bit mad, it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be when it grows up but it’s hedging its bets across a wide musical spectrum, and for me, its real appeal is the sheer weirdness of mashing all of this together, and making a good album out of it. So yeah, endearingly unhinged musically, and I love it.
(9/10 Ellie)
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