The Flight of Sleipnir
Algiz + Berkanan

"Stoner": Anyone can do it, but some do it better. (Part two.)

To play stoner metal, being a jerk helps.

Having played in death and black metal bands (Acheronian Dirge, Nexhymn) doesn't particularly help you study psychosis scales from hash or lysergically dilated rhythms, but it greatly benefits the musician's idiocy. Being then a duo, overweight and American (from Colorado; like Cartman), and basing your philosophy on the Edda, Norse mythology in general, and the study of runes, is borderline idiocy. And so, in 2008, the buffoons Flight Of Sleipnir entered the stoner world with the self-produced demo: "Wisdom Calls For Sacrifice".

 After about a year, spent smoking and revisiting Odin, Borr, Thor and Valhalla, the two Yankees self-produce the first chapter of their discography: "Algiz + Berkanan".

There's a lot to say and nothing at all: it is stoner metal, and stoner metal is stoner metal, dangerously repetitive from its inception, with its four rules you must adhere to: stretch the times (and have a joint), evoke the Sabbath (and have a joint), dull whoever is listening to you with loops and walls of sound (and have a joint), worship Sleep (...and have a joint). And that's the nothing there is to say about the album... There's a lot to say that the raw doom stoner mix is supplemented with folk arpeggios and a voice that does not hide its black (metal) origins; there's to say that the epic component of the series "horned helmets, furry underpants, big red mustaches and long braids" often takes the lead over the heavier component; there's to say that it's an album divided into two parts: the first "algiz" is an eighteen-minute-plus menhir; the second, "berkanan," presents five self-sufficient Norse runes. And there's also to say, however, that you have to listen to it if you want to understand what it's all about.

One could keep it short, even very short, by saying: "Stoner Viking Metal." One could do that, and perhaps it would be sufficiently idiotic and concise to convey the idea, but it would also be unfair because it would leave out all the amusing nonsense that pulls the album out of the too-often homogeneous mud of the genre.