Back in 2017, Montreal, Quebec’s Valfreya released the critically acclaimed “Promised Land”, sending a rush of vicious folk metal around the world. Taking all the jolly melodies from the genre, but then making it faster and more aggressive, Valfreya has been weaving Norse mythology into a familiar, yet original tapestry since 2009.

Now, there is a new music video from the band, for the song “Warlords” off the 2017 release. The video channels all the energy that Valfreya brings to the stage, impactful growling, soaring clean vocals, imaginative solos, and of course, plenty of catchy verses to sing along to. The track “Warlords” is an excerpt from the tale that spans the entire concept album, the journey of Eric The Red. Valfreya goes into detail about the album: “The album is a journey through a lot of emotions and situations, giving life to a host of varied songs, each with a different sound and personality. The story behind the album is about Eric The Red discovering America and how he defies the Gods, but pays a hefty price for that defiance. It’s a step-up in sound quality and has more intricate guitar parts and better-written music that with every listen you can discover parts you hadn’t noticed before. On top of that, we have an original sound and songs! We want to give more to people that enjoy good riffs!”

The world needs astonishing stories as an outlet for strong emotions now more than ever. In the shape of Montreal’s larger-than-life metal warriors Valfreya, it has them! And in their striking vocalist, it has its Valkyrie! Here’s our interview with the band’s violinist, Maude Théberge!

Beginnings:

The band Valfreya was created by Corinne Cardinal (singer) back in 2009: Daniel Simard (guitar) joined the band at the end of 2009. They are the only remaining original members of the band in the actual lineup. Other actual members are Érik Grenier (guitar), me, Anis (bass), and Jérémy Racine (drums).

Behind the name:

The name of the band comes from two of Norse mythology’s iconic things mashed together: Valhalla and Freya, the goddess.

Inspiration:

Our influences as a band are Wintersun, Ensiferum, Dimmu Borgir, SepticFlesh, Brymir, classical and folk/Celtic music, etc. We’re mostly influenced by the artists we listen to the most at this time and by each other’s ideas. We’re well advanced in the composition and preproduction of the third album. Since the band now has a violinist instead of a keyboardist, our compositions are more focused on violin. 

Teamwork:

We like to exchange ideas and mix and match our different influences to create something as unique as we can, mostly using Guitar Pro. Collaboration is a lot of fun and takes us to places we never thought we’d go.

COVID-19:

We can’t practice as a band and we’re missing it, and obviously, there are no shows either. On the bright side, we’re working hard on writing new songs for our upcoming album and it’s coming along pretty nicely!

Online concerts:

We have nothing planned on this side at the moment. It could be interesting, but not very easy considering that we cannot practice together at the moment.

Epic, Metal, Symphonic, Viking, Amazing

Describe your music in five words!

Fun facts:

Our former keyboard player and I, are now a couple, and it all happened very recently! The fun fact is that I took Shark’s place when he quit the band. Finally, he still has to go see our shows. (laughs)