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PREMIERE: Völur Puts Heathen Folk/Doom on the Map with Their Gorgeous New Album, 'Disir'

The Toronto trio's Prophecy Productions debut is a winsome blend of pastoral folk, gentle prog, atmospheric doom, and old world magic.

Ever since they quietly followed me on Twitter and I espied their bio, I've been anxiously awaiting new music from Toronto's Völur. Honestly, how could I resist a description like this: "Drawing from folk melodies, heathen spirituality and trance-inducing doom, Völur weave a hypnotic web of chthonic noise across the yawning gap of silence"? I couldn't, and as a result, we're premiering the band's first album (its reissue marks their debut for Prophecy Productions) below.

Before you dig into Disir, though, it's worth taking a little time to find out what Völur is all about. As they themselves noted, there's a lot of doom and folk going on, but what they leave out is how jaw-droppingly good they are at interweaving the two musical disciplines into a cohesive, beautiful whole that also manages to seamlessly incorporate prog, drone, and neoclassical elements. There's an ambient aspect, as well, which is sort of unavoidable when you're working with two genres—doom and folk—that demand space and atmosphere to really unfurl and grow into themselves.

Disir takes up a lot of room, but is more inviting than commanding—there's a certain winsome, gentle quality to the music that's hard to resist, whether Laura C. Bates' violin is flying fretfully above her own vocal trills and Lucas Gadke's Sabbathian bass stomp on "The Deep-Minded" or Jimmy P. Lightning's measured drum hits are enveloping your ears in minimal, hypnotic folk on epic album closer "Heiemo." Gadke is also known for his work with folk rock tricksters Blood Ceremony, but here, his focus is less Summerisle than Scandinavian; Disir is rooted deeply in pagan mythology and folklore, and incorporates folk traditions from Sweden, the Alps, and Germany to add to the overal mystical effect.

This is one of my favorite records of the year so far, and I'm extremely stoked to be able to see them play it live at their European debut in Balve, Germany next month at Prophecy Fest 2016 (set to take place July 29-30 inside Balver Höhle, "a natural cave from old stone age"—how sick is that?). Pagan's progress, indeed.

Kim Kelly is (obviously) on Twitter.