Voices From The Darkside is for sure not an infotainment site but if I need to advise three things which can be easily connected with the terminus Viking Metal I would reply as follows: Frost, Fire and Wotan (yes – the glorious ENSLAVED times). The Icelandic warriors TYR will never be connected with these three things even if their record label is trying to sell their fourth album with the label Viking Metal but they still deserve to be reviewed here due to the fact that they are writing really good songs. Napalm Records re-released the TYR debut “Eric The Red” in 2006 and since then the band fills the gap between Pagan Metal on one shore and the pathos filled Heavy Metal universe on the other one in someway. The album starts with the great opener ‘Hold The Heathen Hammer High’ and with more Death / Black Metal vocals this song could be connected with historical bands like MITHOTYN. And these parallels are further emphasized by traditional – means folklore based – songs like ‘Trondur I Gotu’. During the last years TYR fought hundreds of live battles and you can fell that the band focused on the live capability of their songs – so don’t expect any headache producing complex breaks or guitar parts. The album immediately finds his way into your ear and at the right moment this is exactly the music I need – far away from the 12 minutes puzzle songs with 18.000 breaks per minute – but only time can tell if this album is in the position to put a hex on his listener for more than 2 months. www.napalmrecords.com, www.tyr.net