Runaljod – gap var Ginnunga by Wardruna [via Tunc] Disappointed. Tunc usually has a pretty good idea of what I'll like, but I dunno, don't really feel this. "Runaljod – gap var Ginnunga" is the sole album by Norweign band Wardruna. The members have been in a whole bunch of other projects, none that I recognize, but I'm not up on the scene so that's fairly meaningless. Warduna play a very richly textured brand of extremely Nordic Neofolk. There's a lot of unconventional percussive sounds and instruments made from animal skin. I might like it more once I get a good snowfall, because it is, atmospherically, a very, very wintry album. A lot of it sounds like some sort of creepy, although not necessarily sinister, ritual on some great, snow-covered hilltop in the dead of night. Which you'd think would be fucking awesome, right? I would, at least. But it's not, weirdly enough. The thing's 50 minutes, which is usually a fair length for this sorta stuff, but I was getting very bored of it by like halfway through. I dunno. All of the tracks start to blend together into some sort of viscous slush of hymnal vocalizations and bowed strings. So, yeah, not awful, but disappointing.
>> gloomp