The text describes a journey of a doomed warrior who fights with his band of Vikings and dies in a blood-driven ecstasy on the battlefield. After his painful death, his body sinks into the blood-covered soil and travels through the chthonic wastelands below, only to arrive to a place where all other slain bodies rot together under the reign of Hel in and around the bleak hall of ?lj??nir, a monstrous building made from the spines of poison-dripping snakes; a place beyond the spheres of time. Through the treacherous shot guided by Loki, Baldr, the brightest of all gods, is sent to Hel and the worlds begin to collapse. Now, at the beginning of Ragnar?k, the undead people start to wander back to the surface of life to fight at the final battle at I?avellir. The grand depiction of Ragnar?k in V?lusp? gives the most detailed description of this event and its disastrous conclusion in fire when Surtr cleanses the earth with his flaming sword Surtalogi. The slain bodies appear, however, again after all life has been extinguished. Carried by the wings of N??h?ggr, they fall down to the revitalizing earth to bring back their very own mythological phaenomenon of death. It is our hope that some of this apocalyptic atmosphere is transmitted through the music, lyrics and visual arts of this very special release.
