Eivør To Unveil The Next Phase Of Her Remarkable Artistic Journey With ‘Tungl’

For over two decades, Faroese artist Eivør has been regarded as one of the most bewitching and fearless voices to have emerged from the Nordic music scene. Ranging across rock, pop noir, jazz and folk to electronica over the course of eleven solo albums, various collaborations, live albums and soundtrack work including The Last Kingdom, God of War and God of War Ragnarök, her musical path has revealed both a restless, explorative spirit and a singer deeply connected to her Faroese roots, earning her the Nordic Council Music Prize along the way.

It’s testament to the singular yet universal nature of her music that her fanbase has grown to include metalheads and the Norse pagan folk scene – for whom her startling voice, hide drum and throat-chant incantation, Trøllabundin, has become an unofficial anthem, as well as the mainstream, all instinctively understanding that music coming from a place of true authenticity knows no boundaries.

If Eivør’s last album, Enn, marked the beginning of a darker, more atmospheric phase, her forthcoming release, Tungl. the Faroese word for ‘moon,’ and her first for the powerhouse German metal label Nuclear Blast, sees her reach further into elemental realms than ever before. Immersive, unmoored and steeped in a sense of time-stretched drama where familiar marker points give way as an inner compass emerges over its ten searching tracks, it’s an album also in tune with a very contemporary need for navigation, self-belief and rejuvenation in the most uncertain of times. Eivør Pálsdóttir talks to Rob Lyon about the album.

Congratulations on the new album. How do you feel leading up to the release date?
Yeah, I’m very excited, I can’t believe it’s already happening, but apparently it is. The album is finished, and it will be out in October, so yeah, I’m very excited about that. I’ve just been in the studio for such a long time recording this album, I’ve had a good break from it, I haven’t listened to it much since I finished it. Which I usually do take a little break from it, so I can come back to it fresh.

Was it hard letting it go and trying to find that point where you could stop and not really add anything further to it?
Totally, I think the hardest part of any creative process is knowing when to stop. You have to decide, at some point, that this is what you want it to be, because it’s so easy to keep changing things and adding more. Sometimes you just need to leave it where it is for it to reach its full potential. It’s easy to overlook that, and that’s what makes it so hard.

I guess the songs are almost like your children in a way. Letting them go must be incredibly hard?
It is, but once you make that decision this is exactly where I wanted it to go, you also end up surprising yourself in the process. It never turns out exactly how you imagine, so part of it is staying curious enough to follow those different directions. When you finally finish it and let it go, it’s such a relief, at least for me. You make the decision, you let it go, and then it has its own DNA.

When you get to that point, do you feel relieved, proud, anxious?
All of those things, relief, pride, anxiety, it’s all in there. You’re uncertain how people will receive it, and at the same time I’m extremely particular; I never let anything go until I get that feeling. When you know it’s finished, it’s finished. I always have to feel that before I wrap it up. So mostly it’s a good feeling, and as long as you know you’re doing something you believe in, there’s a certain calm in that. Then you just see what happens afterwards.

Do you feel the weight of pressure or expectations with this album, given that you had a certain level of success with the last one?
Thank you, I haven’t thought of it that way really. Of course, you always want your next album to be better than the last one, it’s always an endless struggle, or like an endless curiosity journey, where you make one album, and then you move on to the next one, and you want to find something even greater within yourself or something. I think it’s always like that. You always aim to be better. But for this album, I feel like it really much came from the other album that I made, Enn, which came out two and a half years ago. When I had released that album, I still felt I had a few things to explore that I was exploring on Enn, and I think those things are kind of the things that I’ve put on this album. So they are, like, siblings.

How do you think your sound evolved between albums?
I think Enn was very cinematic, maybe my most cinematic album to date. It had these flowy, cinematic soundscapes combined with beats and heavy drums, and that world really came from what I’d been doing over the past years, working across video game music, film music, and my own projects. All of that becomes part of your creative universe. While Enn was more about looking outward and had that spacious feel, this album is more about looking inward, about human emotions and all the different colours that live within us. Sound‑wise, I think this one is a bit more beat‑driven, a little less electronic, and more hand‑played, like a band in a studio, which I really like. That was something I wanted for this album.

Was it clear in your mind what you wanted to do with this album?
Like I said, I had a few songs I’d already started that didn’t make it onto Enn, because I felt they belonged on a different album. Those songs ended up laying the groundwork for this one. They already had a more acoustic, well, not acoustic, but more of a band‑in‑a‑room feeling. So I knew I wanted that for this album. I wanted to combine the cinematic, spacious feel with the electronic elements, but also have it hand‑played in a studio. I wanted to leave some flaws in there, here and there. I wanted it to feel as human as possible.

Did the songs come easily to you in the process, or did it take quite a bit of work to get there?
I felt the songs came easily, or at least the ideas do. But you have to make space for them; you can’t just sit around and wait. Sometimes you have to force yourself to write and chase ideas, because they don’t always arrive on their own. Like David Lynch says, you have to go out fishing and catch the big fish. The biggest challenge, though, is finishing songs. I get all these ideas, I write them down, they end up in a drawer, and then the real work is taking them out and carrying them all the way home. That’s where the struggle is for me, but I have to do it, otherwise I’ll go crazy.

With songs that aren’t finished, do you get to a point where you either continue with it or let it go and maybe pick it up again later?
Sometimes, yeah, but I really struggle with unfinished business. I can’t just leave songs hanging, I don’t feel any peace until I finish them. Then sometimes I finish them and still don’t like them, or I listen back and think, oh… that’s rubbish. But at least it’s finished, and you can move on to the next thing. Somehow, some of those songs find their way back into my life later on. It’s just different processes, I think.

Do the songs change much from your original vision and what you set out to achieve with the album?
Sometimes, yeah. You have an idea and think, oh, this would sound so good like that, and then you try it and it doesn’t work at all. So you peel it apart and find new ways of putting it together. It’s like building LEGO sometimes, taking pieces apart and rebuilding until it fits. Other times it’s completely clear from the start and works exactly the way you imagined. That’s the beauty of creation: the little surprises along the way, the things you didn’t plan. It’s the same with life, the magical moments are the ones we don’t expect. I guess it’s about having a vision, but keeping a window open for those surprises to come in.

When you put the headphones on and listened to your album for the very first time, like a fan would, what was your reaction?
Yeah, but I haven’t done that yet. I’m going to do it one of these days, because I want to forget about it for a while and then come back to it as if I’m someone else listening to the album. But I haven’t reached that point yet. I probably will by the end of this month.

Maybe you’ve got to do it in your car, go for a bit of a cruise.
That’s a good idea! That’s my favourite place to listen to music. Especially new music that you really want to dig into? Do you do that, too?

Yeah, absolutely. Fridays is generally the day where new albums come out, so you have them all queued up. How hard was it to pick a first single?
Oh my god, I’m horrible with single choices. I need help with that, because I’m always so deep in the process. I love all the songs equally, and my ideas for singles would probably be very different, so I often ask people for their opinions, what should be the first single? Now that I have a record label, they had some ideas too, and we discussed it. I liked their suggestion, because the first single is really about giving people a little glimpse into the world of the album. Healer, for example, felt like a fun song to introduce that. But yeah, like I said, I’m terrible at it. I don’t have good judgment when it comes to singles.

Are you excited to be getting out on the road and touring? Is that starting soon, or are you already on tour now?
I am on tour now, we’re traveling by bus right now in Europe, playing summer festivals and some headline shows in between as well. I’m playing two of the new songs on this tour, actually it’s fun to kind of test them out, how they work live, as well, in front of the audience, and I think they’ve been quite well received, I feel, and feels good.

Any plans to tour Australia?
I know that I’m coming to Australia again. I don’t know if it’s next year or the year after, but I’ve been touring there quite a lot, quite a lot, twice, or something and I’m so blown away by it.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Tungl is out via Nuclear Blast on Friday October 16. Pre-order Tungl here: https://eivor.bfan.link/tungl