Fjällfolk’s “Trick or Treat”: A Nine-Track Descent Into Myth, Madness, and Metallic Mayhem Album

Fjällfolk, a metal band from Sweden Kalmar to be exact, is back with their tenth full-length record called "Trick or Treat". It is a dark, blistering, and tightly woven concept album that, in a very vivid way, takes you face-to-face with the most frightful creatures of folklore. Across nine furious tracks, the band transforms demons, banshees, vampires, witches, and ancient gods of chaos into living, roaring embodiments of heavy metal. This album is definitely more than just a Halloween-themed record; it is a terrifying gallivant through the animal kingdom of folklore, ideally suited to riffs that could easily cause bleeding.

The creation of the album Fjällfolk is like the artistic manifestation of Patrik Byström in one of his Zimzalabim, Zionessa, or Suburbia Punks projects, but here he is totally free and completely unrestrained. In this album, he goes beyond the confines of a single genre and combines diverse styles such as heavy metal, power metal, progressive metal, and punk to create a work that is brilliant, feral, and of huge proportions.

The main feature that sets this album apart from the others is its sheer narrativity. The songs narrated on the album not only speak of mythical entities, but rather, they are those entities themselves. One song attacks with the war cry of a wailing spirit, another romances with the siren call of a vampire, while the rest descend into the primal roar of the gods. 

The album constantly moves back and forth between suffering and joy, thus providing the kind of abrupt sound changes that will be the most delightfully appalling experience for fans of concept and heavy metal.

Even though the album is quite a solemn one, its creators haven’t forgotten to insert some elements of playfulness: Fjällfolk, being aware of what they are doing, are giving the Halloween theme a humorous and lighthearted touch while still maintaining the musical integrity, which is apparent in the tightly written heavy, adrenaline-pumping compositions.

The record is produced in a way that is both gritty and spacious, giving it a vibe of the past and of untamedness at the same time. "Trick or Treat" is theatrical Fjällfolk at its best, most brutal, and most mythically inspired, thus confirming that, even a decade into their journey, the Swedish metal shapeshifters are still capable of conjuring something wicked.