While Faroe Islands folk-metallers Tyr won’t be releasing their seventh album, Valkyrja, until September 17th in North America, Metal Insider is proud to premiere another song from the album. “Mare of My Night” is a melodic, anthemic power-metal song that’s easily one of the album’s highlights. Vocalist/guitarist Heri Joenson spoke about the song, which he says is the most sexually explicit song he’s ever written.

“Mare Of My Night” was by far the most difficult song on the album to write, music wise. What I usually do is work on a basic idea, a melody with a chord progression. I make variations over the basic idea and then I pick out the best variations for the respective parts of the song, verse, chorus etc. For this one I had more variations than ever before and I made more versions of this song that I’ve ever done before, so it was very difficult to choose. I’m still not sure I made the best possible song, which is not a satisfying feeling at all. But there you have it.

As for the text, once I went to work on it, it was written in a day or two, in the evenings during studio time. I had the title and the story line long in advance. It’s based on the mare from folklore, the human-like creature that lies on top of you, riding you, causing bad dreams. As in nightmare, riding like a mare etc. Our anonymous viking, the protagonist of the story, finds in this song that his earthly woman has gone from being a goddess to being nightmare. It is also the most sexually explicit piece of lyric I have written so far.”