Hail and well met, traveler.  Won’t you stay a while, enjoy the warmth of the campfire and sip upon the hearty ale we offer up this evening?  Oh, you want some metal too?  I got you.  Drink from the cup of heresy.  This week’s offerings: The Flight of Sleipnir’s Nature’s Cadence and Warpigs Brewing’s Foggy Geezer.

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The Tunes: The Flight of Sleipnir’s Nature’s Cadence

I’ve been following The Flight of Sleipnir for quite a while, ever since Vince recommended Skadi to me at a point in time when I absolutely needed to hear it.  I even waxed poetic about Eventide and what a wonderful departure it was for the Denver quartet (I also completely forgot I wrote this review!  Time really flies when you’re having fun here at Nine Circles dot c o!).  On Nature’s Cadence, the band get back to business and back to their beginnings, with a blend of Norse and Viking aesthetics, black metal, doom and groove.  Dialed back, but not completely gone, are the acoustic, folk and lighter affairs of Eventide and raised to the forefront are the black metal riffing and thundering drums of their heyday.  If you’re worried though, worry not for a few reasons: one, the pedal steel and acoustic guitar are back on the entirely relaxed “The Woodsman” and in the soaring midsection of standout track “Madness”; second, the metal elements are killer, and I’m happy to see them make their return.  Not that I don’t love anything TFoS put out, but to see them get back to what made me intrigued by them in the first place is a welcome sort of nostalgia.  Plus, production wizard Pete de Boer’s work behind the board makes this album sound rich and warm against the lyrical backdrop of nature’s twin beauty and fury.  Nature’s Cadence was even mastered on vintage analogue equipment for that special je ne sais quoi that makes it all the more expressive.  Leading the charge on expression is new guitarist Jeremy Winters, who joined after the release of Eventide and whose stamp is all over the bluesy, melodic and lyrical solos that pepper Nature’s Cadence.  Nearly every track features a blistering, gut-busting workout from the lead guitars that scream rock-and-roll over the top of funereal doom and ripping black metal.  Nature’s Cadence is a compelling listen from a band that really deserves more laurels than they seem to get, but I am happy to be back in their corner, writing about an album that really did move me quite a lot.

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The Booze: Warpigs Brewing’s Foggy Geezer

Astute readers of the site might remember that Vince and I share a birthday in September, so this year, when the appropriate time rolled around, I was treated to a lot of really nice things by Angela, my beloved…and she also got me this beer, in honor of me finally becoming an old and feeble man.  Thanks, honey!  Joke’s on her though, this beer is actually right up my alley (I anticipate that’s the real reason why she got it for me, but I like messing with her).  Besides the fact that the brewery and the beer are allusions or outright references to a monumental heavy metal band, this beer is something I would have picked to review for myself, because it is a hazy IPA, one of my favorite styles of beer.  This one is quite a lot more bitter right up front, which I don’t mind at all.  It’s bracing to start, but it quickly finishes into the juicy tropical hop flavors you’d come to expect from this style.  It’s quite big on flavor, but that’ll always be a feature to me.  I am currently engaging in scumbag behavior and using it to wash down a handful of sour gummy worms, and the pairing is a match made in heaven.  Growing old doesn’t mean you have to grow up, kids.

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I feel like I always end these by saying it’s been too long since I wrote a Evcharist, so you know what?  I’ll see ya real soon.  Take that as a threat or promise, your choice.

—– Ian