A bit older release but it just arrived to my eye and ear and legends deserve a review in this webzine. Kampfar from Norway have been in the scene for almost 30 years now, from 1994 mastermind Dolk and his gang deliver their mixture of Norwegian black metal, pagan metal and folk in long epics and this is their brand new opus containing 6 songs coming just under 45 minutes long. For those who don’t know yet, Kampfar is ancient Norse war cry meaning Odin or Wotan. Lyrics are again in Norwegian titles but sung in English as I could hear at times about heritage, nature, battles, pride and staying true at least it is how I understood them from translating titles. It is fascinating how Kampfar builds up from aggressive blasts of raw heritage of Norse black metal to more gentle acoustic atmospheric melodies and then mid tempo pagan almost ritualistic song parts. Although there are longer songs on almost every Kampfar release, there is not one second they get boring, at the contrary, they are exciting if you open your mind and let the music take you to mountains, north wind on your face and standing proud never letting them grind you down, warrior’s heart is hard to stop. My personal favorites: Urkraft, Flammen Fra Nord, Rekviem.

7,5/10