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The Flying Norsemen — The Flying Norsemen
(Apollon Records AP187, 2024, CD / LP / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2025-04-14

The Flying Norsemen Cover art

The Flying Norsemen is most definitely not the same as Flying Norwegians, the long-running country-rock band. No, the Norsemen are more inspired by Pink Floyd, Nektar, and Hawkwind than Crosby, Stills and Nash or the Flying Burrito Brothers. This debut album presents four tracks of space rock, with each LP side consisting of one track over ten minutes and one under — brevity isn’t their thing, but for the most part the songs don’t drag on too long. After all, when you’ve got a catchy riff backed by trippy synthesizers, you can stretch things out quite a bit. Many of the riffs are on the plodding side, so you might think of classic Black Sabbath infused with Ozric Tentacles synths, but they do mix up the moods and tempos a bit. The music is mostly instrumental, and when they do sing, the lyrics are all in Norwegian, so you might get a touch of Tusmørke there. It would be fair to say that they’re not doing anything super original, but they do it well, and my feeling is that space rock fans won’t have a problem with another band mining familiar veins. A track like “Lystens Begjær” mixes things up by detouring into a rolling three-four section that really breaks things up. That’s the kind of thing that brings the music to life, lending appeal beyond the core fans of the genre. While it might be tempting to regard The Flying Norsemen as a kind of Arabs in Aspic side project, they have enough going for them to merit attention on their own.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): The Flying Norsemen

More info
http://theflyingnorsemen.bandcamp.com/album/the-flying-norsemen

 

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