The album starts of slowly with the very folky, low paced intro of ‘Tales from the North‘, but don’t be fooled, that’s just the calm before the storm. After just about a minute, they hit us with the full blast of their power: ‘Tales from the North‘, the song as well as the whole album is bringing us back into the times of Vikings,  focusing on the stories of northern mythology.

‘Drink with the Gods‘ is a bit to repetitive in my opinion, especially, as it’s also a pretty long song with its good four minutes. It could be an epic soundtrack to a night out with friends, just drinking and having fun, even more so as this song is incredibly catchy.

The first single of the album, ‘Odin’s Prayer‘, a hymn to the god of thunder doesn’t just start with a bang, it starts with a full explosion. It’s fast and one of the hardest songs of the album, but it toys with us by giving us this little moments of calm every now and then before it goes back to full force.

‘The Raven’s Cry‘ follows in the same furious fashion after a very folk music style intro and just a little breather around the middle of the song.

After a short, yet beautiful keyboard intro ‘Mimir’s Crystal Eye‘ just runs along without many ups and downs, other than a short keyboard and guitar solo towards the end.

‘Between the Enemy Lines‘ gives a strong Sabaton vibe, especially, in regards to the guitar arrangements, but that’s not a bad thing, this might actually be my favourite song on the album.

The very fast paced, energetic ‘Land of Heroes‘ is a mixture of Bloodbound ‘s well known sound combined with some more traditional and folk metal elements.

Next is the very catchy instant classic ‘Sail Among the Dead‘. This fast pace song just couldn’t sound more like Bloodbound.

‘Stake My Claims‘ has some interesting chord progressions and an easy to remember melody. Also in this song you can hear some folk elements, but they aren’t as prominent as in some of the previous songs.

‘Sword and Axe‘ sound oddly familiar. But while this song is pretty good sing-along material I feel like it just lacks the little something to turn it into great song. And with the chorus repeating multiple times in the end it just gets a bit long.

The album ends big bang in the form of the song ‘1066‘ in which Bloodbound describe the event of the epic battle that became known as the end of the Viking era. A great and fitting ending for album.

Bloodbound are:
Patrik J. Selleby (Vocals)
Tomas Olsson (Guitars)
Henrik Olsson (Guitars)
Anders Broman (Bass)
Fredrik Bergh (Keyboards)
Daniel Sjögren (Drums)

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