BATHORY Nordland II CD (2003)

Quorthon spent the eighties inventing black metal almost entirely on his own in a Stockholm rehearsal room, and then spent a good chunk of the nineties and early 2000s writing Viking epic albums so enormous they make most power metal sound like a bedroom demo. Nordland II is the second half of his final masterwork, released in 2003 just a year before his death, and it lands like a longship running aground on a frozen shore.

Where Nordland I built the mythology, this one weaponises it. The riffs are colossal, the choral arrangements border on cinematic, and the whole record carries the weight of a man who knew he was making something definitive. It's Bathory at their most grandiose without ever losing the rawness that made the early records so vital. If you came to this through the alternative and extreme metal underground, the influence of Nordland on bands like Enslaved, Primordial, and Moonsorrow is almost impossible to overstate.

CD. Studio album. Sweden. 2003.

Fans of: Enslaved, Primordial, Moonsorrow, Manegarm, Windir, Amon Amarth.