Band's List Folk black Borknagar Universal

Bergen, Norway, is best known for their black metal scene, with notorious bands like Burzum and Gogoroth. But the folk metal supergroup, Borknagar, also hail from Bergen. They formed in 1995 and have gone through many line up changes, within a 15 year span of time. Guitarist Oystein Brun is the leader of the band. The band's name, Borknagar, actually doesn't have a real meaning. This fictitious contrivance was chosen, because Oystein wanted a Nordic sounding name, that was "neutral", and wouldn't limit the bands creativity.

They entitled this album, Universal, because the songs deal with man's relationship with nature and the universe. This album was meant to be a counterpoint to their 6 previous albums. Their deal with Century Media Records had been fullfilled, after their previous album, Origin. This new album is their first release with Indie Records, they signed with this label, because they offered them a better deal than Century Media Records did. Asgeir Mickelson, who has worked as a bassist for the band in the past, and also as a drummer ( because of the addition of bassist Erik Tiwaz) on the album Origin, quit the band, because he has different mucical tastes than Oystein. Mickelson was a 10 year veteran with the band. This new album features drummer, David Kinkade, of Malevolent Creation. This album also features ex-vocalist ICS (icyest) Vortex as the guest vocalist on the last track, My Domain. This song was written by Oystein, back in The Archaic Course era, and Vortex liked this song. The band enjoyed working with Vortex in the studio, on that song.

Havoc starts with an energetic folk melody, with grim vocals, and intervals of of nice clean choruses. The clean vocals of Vintersorg mixed with the hammond organ music give the music a sound similar to the classic rock band, Yes. Reason has melodic keyboard playing with grim vocals, then the music gets heavier and the vocals get cleaner. There is some flute playing in the background. This song and also the song, Worldwide seem to have a 1970's pop influence, that sounds slightly like Steely Dan. Despite that, the music still rocks. For A thousand Years To Come is a heavier song that is accompanied with violins, hammond organ music, and some angelic choruses that sound similar to ICS Vortex on the Quintessence album. Abrasion Tide features an awesome nordic guitar lead, interspersed with a rhythm similar to one on the song, The Wonder, on the Epic album. Fleshflower rocks with a very nice Swedish folk melody, that sounds a lot like the style of Vintersorg, his solo band. My Domain is the song that features Ics Vortex on vocals. It's a slower song, with piano and hammond organ music. This song does sound a lot like earlier Borknagar.

Oystein was trying to recapture the sound of earlier Borknagar on this album. But I think that he has achieved a confluence of the styles of the Epic and Quintessence albums. It's much better than their previous album, Origin, their acoustic album. I was very disappointed with that album and traded it back to the record store at a later date. This is a very good album, though it Falls about a notch short of their album, Epic. I'm a big fan of Borknagar, Vintersorg, and Fission. Vintersorg is one of my favorite vocalists. He's also a fine guitarist, but Borknagar only utilizes his singing/songwriting skills. I don't think that they use enough of his song writing skills. If they would have him share more of the song writing duties with Oystein, they could sound even better.