IOTUNN

One would be hard-pressed to summon a superior debut album in 2021 than IOTUNN's "Access All Worlds". The Danish quintet (who have been active since 2015) cast a suitably wide berth with songs generally entangled in the melodic death metal sphere of the Nordic variety, lavished with the immense pipes of Jón Aldará. It was the long-overdue BORKNAGAR, MERCENARY and TÝR mash-up — with a cosmic twist. Three years on, the real test of IOTUNN's mettle falls onto their all-important sophomore album, "Kinship", which, not surprisingly, the Danes pass with flying colors.

Clocking in over an hour and change with eight songs, "Kinship" manages to lay ever so slightly off the grandeur of its predecessor for a more direct hit. This may have to do with the fact that Aldará (who also fronts BARREN EARTH and HAMFERÐ) is now the focal point on several of the album's cuts, notably "I Feel The Night", where his passionate belts and heaves play off the dazzling fretboard work of brothers Jesper and Jens Nocolai Gräs. Aldará still lays down some growls, yet it's the high-wire act he pulls off during the controlled-chaos moments of opener "Kinship Elegiac" as well as the all-acoustic "Iridescent Way" that will likely ensure Aldará gets the props he deserves. (Perhaps the lone knock on "Access All Worlds" was that Aldará did, on occasion, sound like his clean vocals were dropped in for no reason. That matter has been rectified here.)

Going back to the BORKNAGAR, MERCENARY and TÝR trio, IOTUNN effectively yanked out the folk elements of BORKNAGAR and TÝR, while forgoing MERCENARY's reliance on keyboards. It puts the riffs in focus, which is a good idea since there are some dead-set ringers, like the opening sprawl of "Mistland", the hyper-melodies on "Twilight" and "Earth To Sky" and the climatic bows of closer "The Anguished Ethereal".

Indeed, there's a lot of meat in these songs. IOTUNN, to their infinite credit, never makes you feel like they've bitten off more than they can chew. The songs on "Kinship" are simply too much of an enjoyable journey. This is the next level of melodic death metal.