HarmonyDies.... said:
Nagelfar are also one of my favourite Black Metal bands . I want 'Srontgorrth' pretty badly. By the way, what is the concept Shakermaker? Explain
that's hard to explain because the lyrics are very ambiguous and philosophical... but i'll try anyway. essentially, "srontgorrth" is the tale of a viking warrior by the same name and the first four songs all stand for a season, the fifth track is the grand finale. but that's about all one can be sure of
in the first song it seems that srontgorrth is being held captive but can free himself (or maybe he is freed by someone else?). the lyrics draw a comparison to the wolf fenrir: he realizes that he was "freed to die" - or was he?
the tale of srontgorrth is told in a very self-reflective and poetic way, so one is pretty free to interpret it. one could indeed think that the lyrics tell us about fenrir and what happens after he was freed (ragnarök) but i think there's more to the story than that. for me, it's about the general process of freeing one's mind, of "opening new (spiritual) gates" to one's spirit. srontgorrth escapes from the darkness and in the last song he has the chance to "step through the gate" ("behind me lies the debris, before me the gate") - we don't know what happens after that, maybe it's the ultimate downfall, but maybe it's a spiritual ascension of some sort. of course this is quite a personal interpretation and i could be terribly wrong...
hmm... you got me thinking... maybe the album is indeed about "freeing one's mind" but something goes wrong with srontgorrth (maybe srontgorrth confuses freedom with total seclusion from outside influences? the metaphor of "solar eclipse" is used frequently throughout the album and gives an impression of total seclusion and darkness). i'd say it all depends on what answer you give to the question in the title of the first song:
"freedom or doom?"
@demonspell: as i said, definitely check out vittra by naglfar if you like sheol. vittra is one of the greatest milestones of blackened melodic death imho, comparable to dissection's storm of the light's bane.
btw, i just found this mp3.com page for kettenhund records, nagelfar's old record company. they have the rare nagelfar song "nur ein see" available for download there:
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/109/nagelfar.html
and as i said, the download in my first post is only the first half of srontgorrth's opener, so for a real impression, you should use a p2p program.
