AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PANDRADOR — “NITHSTANG OF SLEIPNIR”

The “post death metal” band Pandrador hail from Poland but for their forthcoming second album Seiðr (set for release by Pagan Records on May 26th) they have again drawn inspiration from the heritage of Scandinavian culture. But anyone who guesses they’re about to hear “Viking metal” needs to think again.

The narrative of the album is very much a contemporary heroic poem, not a pedantic leafing through the pages of ancient histories and poems or musical paeans to the glories of Valhalla but a challenging examination of tradition that uses it as a jumping-off point into disturbed reflections about human culture as it now exists (worldwide) and what the future might bring (if we have one).

It’s worth spending a few more minutes about Seiðr‘s conception, because this is one of those albums where the thematic content and the music aren’t really separable. As the advance press describes it: “They complement each other, set the pace and mood for each other. The album spirals through a spectrum of emotions, from unbridled rage, through denial, painful understanding and powerlessness in the face of one’s own tragedy, to the final statement – ‘too late.'”

Photo Credit: Dominika Klimczak / Mishka.photo

We’ll share these further words about what the album represents:

“Seiðr” is a hard-to-define term for the body of knowledge and practices that made up Nordic shamanism. “Seiðr” was a story told around a campfire explaining truths about the world. “Seiðr” was also a contact with a spiritual world, as well as a set of rituals that accompanied that contact. It was also an entrance into a trance and a journey beyond flesh and time.

“Seiðr is a story of pride, betrayal and downfall told over the course of the album. Pandrador is not only inspired by monumental works of Scandinavian culture, but also enters into an active, open dialogue with them. They also refer to revenge tragedies, legends and chronicles written down by Saxo Grammaticus, Elizabethan dramas or the concept of theater of cruelty.

“However, despite an almost academic approach to the subject matter covered, a fair amount of hermeticism, abundant allegories and spinning the tale as much by outlining the plot as by archetypal references, Seiðr is as far from a dry, scholarly treatise as possible. The bond of the story are human emotions, and at its heart – reflection – as personal as it is very universal.

With that backdrop, it’s time to get into the music, and specifically an album track named “Nithstang of Sleipnir” that we’re premiering today through a lyric video made by Eryk Ślęk.

From the beginning, the song is a harrowing hurricane of sound, a sleet-storm gale of ravishing proportions with an earthquake occurring in the earth below. Immense percussive detonations and swaths of dismal searing tones add to the song’s immediately frightening impact. But this is all an unsettling prelude to an even more explosive storm to come — an overpowering onslaught of blistering drums, deranged riffing, and maniacal howls – segmented by bunker-busting jolts.

The music is such a raging fury that it takes the breath away, but those dense sonic hurricanes are layered with a boiling sheen of unearthliness that soars and sweeps with frightening intensity. It makes an already unsettling song even more unsettling, because those immense and immersive tides of sonic fire seem to channel agony and despair — and the vocals somehow reach even greater heights of unchained ferocity.

Oh hell, let’s also share a few more pieces of information about the album. As the band explain: “The etymology of the word ‘Seiðr’ can be found in the Old Norse ‘to sing’ or ‘to speak.’ Sheena McGrath in Asyniur: Women’s Mysteries in the Northern Tradition suggests that the word has a connection to Old English sieð” (modern English: ‘seethe’), meaning ‘to boil with anger’ or ‘to become quietly and slowly furious. In Witchdom of the True on the other hand, Stephen E. Flowers claims that it means ‘looking into the future.'”

And then, finally, we have these words from Pandrador‘s leader Bartłomiej “Bard” Bardon:

“The last few years (not only for known reasons) have left us disillusioned with the reality in which we have lived, the events and their consequences we have experienced. This has led us to reflect on what ‘Seiðr‘ is – a commentary on the ‘conventionality’ of our surroundings; a look at the human desire to oppose one extreme in order to fall into the next one in emotion; the desire to be someone important because we are driven by satisfaction and conventional values, and often conventional complexes. In the midst of all this, there is also the deluding of ourselves with apparent benefits and rationalizing quietly how pathetic we actually are in our actions.”

Seiðr was recorded by Filip ”Heinrich” Hałucha, Szymon ”Sigmar” Grodzki, and Mikołaj Kiciak. The album was mixed and mastered by ”Heinrich” Hałucha at Heinrich House Studio in Legionowo. Pagan Records will release the album on CD and digital formats, and pre-orders are available now.

We have also included a stream of the previously released single “Hvergelmir” and a guitar playthrough video for the song “Valediction of Exalted One”.

PRE-ORDER:
https://www.pagan-records.com/
https://paganrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sei-r

FOLLOW PANDRADOR:
Official website: https://pandrador.pl/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pandrador/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pandradorofficial/