Ensiferum have announced their new album, Thalassic, translating from ancient Greek as “of or relating to seas,” will be released on July 10th via Metal Blade Records. The follow-up to 2017’s Two Paths brings back the group’s classic roots as the LP was recorded and produced in Petrax and Sonic Pump studios by Janne Joutsenniemi, who also worked on the band’s earlier works 2007’s Victory Songs and 2009’s From Afar. This also mark’s the band’s first album to feature their new keyboardist/lead clean vocalist Pekka Montin. These Finnish folk metallers have unleashed a lyric video for the album’s first single, “Rum, Women, Victory,” to celebrate their upcoming record.”
Bassist/vocalist Sami Hinkka comments:
“I think we managed to take another step ahead musically and we also utilized the best parts of our old sound. There are lots of Ensiferum’s trademarks: beautiful folkish melodies, ass-kicking riffs, a nice mix of different vocals and great singalong choruses.”
Thalassic will be Ensiferum’s first record to be built around a theme as Hinkka explains:
“The idea of it started to brew in my mind when I was doing interviews for ‘Two Paths’ and many journalists asked if it was a theme album, and I noticed that I was answering all the time that because of the way we compose it’s almost impossible to make a theme album. This really started to piss me off and the decision was made: the next album would have a theme. At that time, we already had a few songs almost ready for the next album, and I started to listen to the demos much more from the feeling aspect instead of analyzing them musically. For some reason, all of them took me to a seashore, and the theme was found: something related to sea or water. So I started to read about history, myths and legend around the world that had something to do with the theme, but even though all of the lyrics are obviously inspired by this, I tried my best to keep Ensiferum’s heroic mentality in them. In the end, there were too many ideas for lyrics, because I didn’t set myself any boundaries – like all stories would have to be Nordic, etc, and one of my favourite songs on the album tells about Andromeda from Greek mythology. I can’t promise that this way of lyric-writing will be the future of Ensiferum, but at least we did this once.”
Watch the lyric video below and pre-order the album here:
Track List:
01) Seafarer’s Dream
02) Rum, Women, Victory
03) Andromeda
04) The Defence of the Sampo
05) Run from the Crushing Tide
06) For Sirens
07) One with the Sea
08) Midsummer Magic
09) Cold Northland (Väinämöinen Part III)
10) Merille Lahteva (Bonus Track)
11) I’ll Stay by Your Side (Bonus Track)
