FEJD — Nagelfar (review)

Album · 2013 · Non-Metal

4/5 · 2013-06-09
adg211288

Sweden’s Fejd are a bit of an enigma within the metal scene, in that the group doesn’t actually play metal, but Nordic folk music. Yet since their even their early demo releases Fejd seems to be an accepted part of the metal scene. They boost connections to a few metal bands such as Pathos and Nostradameus, but they themselves as a band don’t even feature a full time guitarist, instead favouring traditional instruments, mostly played by frontman Patrik Rimmerfors, including bouzouki, Swedish bagpipe and hurdy-gurdie. How then do Fejd quite often get labelled as a folk metal act? It’s a term that other listeners in my experience have quite vehemently tried to disassociate the band from. Personally I think both arguments have their points. 2013’s Nagelfar is the third full-length album from Fejd, and it looks set to refuel the debate once again as Fejd show some evolution from the sound heard on Storm (2009) and Eifur (2010).

While at first Nagelfar may come across as band of the same from Fejd, it becomes apparent, especially in the later stages of the album, that Fejd have given those claiming the act to belong to folk metal a bit more ground to stand on, as Nagelfar does actually feature some uses of a heavy distorted guitar now. It’s a rarity, but it is there, where it had, to my knowledge, only ever been used in one prior Fejd song from their Eld (2006) EP. Fejd though have always had quite the aggressive take on how they produced their folk music and while it may have been simpler to label them as folk rock at most, I at least have always been able to hear a metal-like approach to their technique, if not their actual sound. It’s never been there all the time, Fejd have long proved themselves capable of switching between gentle and aggressive music on their albums, but I for one have felt that the band has always had some underlying metal influences even though I couldn’t honestly call them a folk metal band. Metal elements are much more obvious on Nagelfar, so maybe this will be the album where people finally get what it is Fejd do.

I think that Fejd already produced a couple of high grade albums in Storm and Eifur but Nagelfar is easily the album that they needed to make at this stage of their career. It extends their sound with new ideas without sacrificing anything that made their sound special. The result is a more varied album containing songs that sound like typical Fejd standards such as Sigurd Ring, the darkly menacing title track and the metal fuelled Vindarnas Famn. Patrik Rimmerfors’s vocals are perfect as always, and even though I don’t understand a word of the Swedish sung lyrics, most the songs get stuck in my head, especially Den Skimrande (a favourite after the title track) and Sigurd Ring.

Overall I wouldn’t say that Nagelfar is quite as strong an album as the prior Eifur, but it’s certainly a satisfying follow-up and a slightly stronger release than debut effort Storm. All Fejd’s releases have sat comfortably on my ‘exceptional album’ rating tier though and Nagelfar is no exception to this run of high quality work from the Swedish folk act. After near enough three years away, it is good to have Fejd back putting out new music.

86/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/fejd-nagelfar-t2995.html)