Interview

Theigns & Thralls Founder Discusses Debut Album

Folk metal has come a long way since it was first recognised as a genre in the 1990s. While bands like Led Zeppelin were experimenting with folk music, it was the likes of Skyclad and Cruachan who established it as a true sub-genre and over the past ten years or so, its popularity has sky rocketed. As mentioned, Skyclad were arguably the first folk metal band and so it's unsurprising that one of the year's most excited albums in the genre would come from a member of its lineup, as frontman Kevin Ridley introduces the world to Theigns And Thralls.

It was only two weeks ago today that the band released their debut album, an eponymous trek which finds so many instances and events from history that the modern world has barely learned from, if at all. Joining Ridley on this journey are current and ex members of Irish legends Waylander and Cruachan, while an enormous amount of guest musicians from the likes of Korpiklaani, Ensiferum and Celtibeerian were also involved. To find out more about the record, Metal Underground spoke with Kevin Ridley himself, in an interview which you can watch in full below.

Diamond Oz: Obviously people know you from your work with Skyclad. What would you say it is about Theigns And Thralls that gives you more freedom of expression, if at all?

Kevin Ridley: Well, that's one of the things. Most of the songs that I write with Skyclad are co-written of course but obviously on the Theigns And Thralls album, I've written them all. Having said that, some of the songs are adaptations of poems and things like that from the past, which again is one of the things that Theigns And Thralls allows me to do because I have this penchant for history and historical fiction, so I can combine those things to create these new songs, so I'm not trying to fit in with what Skyclad's doing, I've got a free hand to do what I want. I've got to say, one of the things to remember is that when I started Theigns And Thralls, I didn't have a plan or anything, it was the kind of thing that just evolved because of the pandemic.

As you're well aware, we were will sitting with time on our hands in a lockdown situation and I had a few songs, because I'd done a solo album before and I wanted to do another one, because as a musician, you never really stop writing. Some things are suitable for Skyclad and some songs aren't so you end up with some stuff. It was a gradual thing where I said, "I've got this time on my hands, I've got a few songs, what can we do with this?" and kind of built it up from there. Once I got into it, it evolved quite quickly and I kind of found a little niche or a certain area that I thought was productive, so I followed it and got in touch with some friends who I felt could add things to it and then it built up to friends of friends and grew into this project, so I started taking it a bit more seriously once I realised it could turn into an album. We couldn't do anything with Skyclad anyway because I live in another country.

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