Fredlös
s/t

Fredlös is roughly translated to outlaw, or someone standing outside normal society, kind of. It is the name of a sextet from Norrtälje in the Stockholm area who are making their self-titled debut album. It doesn’t have a great cover, cool style but pretty ugly. They seem to be inspired by the past, history and folk music, things that can be interesting, though Swedish history and folk music are kind of boring and not really my cup of tea. Still, combining folk music with metal can lead to very interesting stuff, so what about these guys?

Well, the use of mostly female vocals makes in more interesting than some, the sound and production is also fresh, always a positive. The style isn’t unique, but at least it is far from the most threaded paths in the metal world, and such things are always better. But the sometime weak vocals by lead singer Liv is not a positive aspect, the male vocals are not terrific but the other word starting with terri, terrible of course. And why make the album eternally long? I had this sense that it was like six-seven hours long, but the music players says that it is about an hour, at least thirty minutes too much for this album and fifteen minutes too much for most albums. I wonder why some bands fail to understand that, more minutes in music or movies does not equal more value for money. Cutting away thirty minutes would not detract anything from the album, just improve it, so why didn’t they?

I was debating how to rate this, I like how it starts, but then I grow increasingly bored from about the halfway mark and onwards, just waiting for it to end and not really listening at all. My mind has gone elsewhere, thinking about the next task, the next thing to do when I am done with this. In a way I kind of hate writing about those records as it is difficult to say anything about them when the mind doesn’t want to focus on anything about it. But I know that that I could save the first five tracks and throw away the rest and possibly add another H to the rating, and I also know that I am worrying about the middle rating being too positive. But I think the negatives and positive more or less balance one another and considering that most 2023 releases so far has been given a rating below the middle one it could be nice to have something more positive.

Maybe folk metal fans will find this interesting, perhaps even good. I like it that they sing in Swedish, too few good bands do that. But they also show that folk music is boring no matter what, there aren’t many exceptions to that rule. And wasn’t there a part of this album that is stolen from Jämtlandssången? It is an informal national anthem of Jämtland in the middle of Sweden where I happen to live, and a piece on this album sounds very much like that one – at least that is my impression but I don’t listen to those kinds of songs so I can’t be completely sure.

HHHHHHH