I think in one way or another you can find rough influence from scene veterans MENHIR and RIGER in nearly every German Pagan Metal band. This not automatically means that own ideas are not existing it’s just a further prove for the difficulties of turning back time and invent the wheel once more. THRUDVANGAR are one of these bands where you don’t have to search really in detail to find these parallels. The 6 band members are part of the scene long enough, “Zwischen Asgard und Midgard” is their third release, so that they know where their heart is pounding and the album is offering 8 songs of traditional Pagan Metal. The first 2 songs are nothing special but the third song ‘Heimwärts’ is getting more melodic and the band is also adding a great refrain which will become a real highlight during their live shows for sure. The next song ‘Runenstein’ is due to the spoken vocals a song which is easily imaginable on the next MENHIR release. But THRUDVANGAR can’t convince for 100 % with their third release because not all songs are on the same quality level. The share is more or less 50/50 with a big bonus for the great and detailed artwork but I fear that 4 great songs are not enough, especially when you think about the current boom in this scene. www.thrudvangar.com, www.einheit-produktionen.de