✦✦✧✧ Is Viking metal your thing?

If “yes,” then great; listen to this and smash some beer steins while you’re at it.

If “no,” I don’t know that this is the album that’ll change your mind.

The main problem here is that, while this music is absolutely 100% fitting with the subgenre (and with the band’s previous work), the songs are often not super compelling on their own, or they’re plagued by moments of awkward goofiness, or both.

★★☆☆ This is pretty much exactly what you’d expect: Scandinavian folk metal done impeccably well, with hardly any surprises at all.