AMONG THE RAFT of Nordic folk acts to have emerged in Wardruna and Heilung’s wake, Skáld are the most curiously overlooked. Curious because they’re actually massive: half a million monthly Spotify listeners, playing 3,500-capacity venues and album sales through the turfed roof. And yet you can sense they’re not taken as seriously as, or by, their more earnest contemporaries. Ever since their debut album, 2019’s Vikings Chant, there’s been a whiff of opportunism hanging over them – not so much because they hail from the non-Scandic region of Gaul, but perhaps down to their early promo pics looking like a Heathen fashion shoot, some overly obvious plundering of their dual overlords, and their tendency to stray from the Poetic Edda to reinterpret arguably non-canon sources such as Björk and The White Stripes.
With founder Christophe Voisin-Boisvinet now the only original member, Skáld’s third album isn’t going to assuage the doubters, but it is likely to help them continue their ascent. They aren’t alone in not reaching the rapt,
