Ironwood - :Fire:Water:Ash:
by Kevin Wierzbicki
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If you could somehow manage to outfit a mob of kangaroos with horned helmets and send them madly hopping en masse across the Outback they still wouldn't look very much like marauding Vikings. The members of Australian band Ironwood would have to imbibe an awful lot of Victoria Bitter to even dream of such a silly thing but they are otherwise amazingly imaginative when it comes to being inspired by ancient culture, especially Norse mythology. :Fire:Water:Ash: is a song cycle that tackles the age-old question, "What is the meaning of life?" But instead of having the search take place in the modern day Ironwood has imagined what that struggle would have been like when people turned to the Aesir (a group of gods including Odin, the god of wisdom and war referred to here as Woden) for answers. Music with this theme is usually performed as black metal and Ironwood uses that device on songs like "The Oncoming Storm" and "Jarnvidr Gallows" but much of the album sounds more like Metallica in slow motion. There are well-performed acoustic moments too like the longing "The Raven Song" where singer Phil Brown's voice takes on an almost operatic quality. "The Serpent Seeks Its Tail" comes mid-album and wonders aloud "Is this a parable;" it's also the point in the story where exploration and hope are given up for the resignation that death is approaching and there are still no answers. Ironwood clearly has a working knowledge of the mythology they sing about here; "ironwood" is even a translation of the word that describes the no-man's land that souls must traverse on their way to Hel, the place of afterlife in Norse mythology. More importantly though, the guys are accomplished musicians and they spin this tale in such a way that you can marvel at its telling again and again.
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Ironwood - :Fire:Water:Ash:
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