Week 93 – TYR

My HeadBangers welcome from the Faroe Islands:       TÝR 

“Fire and Flame”

Týr  is a Faroese folk metal band. They have been characterized as one of “the islands’ two most successful metal bands”. Their subject matter revolves almost entirely around Viking lore, mythology, and history, taking their name from Týr, the god of war in Norse religion.

Tyr was the Norse god of war, a brave warrior and member of the Aesir tribe, he championed order and justice. The namesake of Tuesday, he lost his arm to Loki’s ferocious offspring Fenrir, the giant wolf. The one-armed god of the Norse pantheon, Tyr was a member of the Aesir tribe who represented war and bloodshed.

Here we go my HeadBangers, named after the God of War, another great band with a great story.

Ragnars Kvæði

Truly awesome music and beautiful country.

Let’s look at some bio on this band:

Before Týr, Heri Joensen and Gunnar H. Thomsen formed their first band, Cruiser, at the age of seventeen. Streymoy also played with them for a short while. They later changed their name to Wolfgang. Although neither band released any albums, Wolfgang, who are still active, recorded an undisclosed number of songs that, according to Joensen, are “pretty much ready to release.”

Týr formed in Copenhagen in 1998. Heri Joensen met his old bandmate, Kári Streymoy, at a party in January in Copenhagen. Joensen suggested to Streymoy that they should meet up and jam. Streymoy initially declined, but later took him up on his offer. They were soon joined by another former bandmate, bassist Gunnar H. Thomsen, expanding the duo into a trio. In 2001, guitarist Terji Skibenæs joined the band.

They signed a worldwide deal with Austria’s Napalm Records in early 2006, while signed to the Faroese record label Tutl. In September 2012, they signed a three-album deal with Metal Blade Records.

They began making music which was heavily inspired by Norse mythology, kvoeoi (Faroese traditional music), and heavy metal music in general. According to the band’s frontman Heri Joensen.

The band’s lyrics and imagery promote pan-Nordic ideologies, and draw on well established, transnational genre conventions from metal music; but has also suggested that the band’s insistence on their Faroese identity, which has been fetishised by international audiences, could ‘be regarded as a form of self-exoticisation. The band’s handling of traditional songs is characterized by fidelity to traditional melodies, but more complex and innovative handling of associated chord progressions and harmonies.

The band has been accused of promoting Nazi ideologies through their use of runes and other imagery appropriated by Nazis. The band responded to these accusations with the song “Shadow of the Swastika” on the album Lay of Thrym (2011), which in the assessment of Karl Spracklen, ‘attacks the far-right for appropriating…heathen symbols and images associated with pre-Christian northern Europe’. Even so, scholars have, in the words of Catherine Hoad and Samuel Whiting, suggested that ‘through imagining the Viking as an ancestral, genetic category, the “common past” of the Nordic people is constructed as a self-identity apart from other people’ in the work of Týr.   Likewise, Spracklen finds that ‘the themes in Týr’s songs celebrate pagan identity, Viking identity and the hegemonic masculinity of the Viking warrior combined with the modern-day heavy metal anthem of being an individual.

As with some bands, people come and go till the perfect matches are found, that’s what makes a band a family.

“Sunset Shore”

My HeadBangers, this song, yeah gives me chills.  I just could listen to this for hours, and you know I will, it’s already on my phone yesss!!

Let’s meet the band:

From left to right:

Heri Joensen – Vocals and Guitar

Gunnar Thomsen – Bass

Tadeusz Rieckmann – Drums