VALKYRIE'S FIRE have released "Out Of Darkness," their debut full-length album, out now worldwide on Eclipse Records.
The Nashville sextet have been building to this since 2020. Their 2023 EP "Ascension," also on Eclipse, established the template and picked up some early recognition along the way — a Group Of The Year nomination in the rock/metal category at the 2024 Josie Music Awards, and Best Breakthrough Act at the 2024 FemMetal Awards. "Out Of Darkness" is the first time they have committed the full idea to a long-form record: thirteen tracks running past seventy-two minutes.
The band are vocalists Bettie Floyd and Adam Sanders, guitarist Joey Grimaldi, bassist Dave Hale, keyboardist and cellist Salem Belladonna, and drummer Ryan Metroka. Twin lead vocals and a cello sitting inside the keyboard parts give the arrangements more room to move than the genre usually allows.
Grimaldi produced and engineered the album himself, which is worth noting for a debut of this scale — symphonic metal is an expensive sound to get right, and doing it in-house is a statement of confidence. Mastering went to Mikael Sehlin, the Swedish engineer whose credits include AMARANTHE, ENGEL and IN FLAMES. The cover art comes from Jan Yrlund, the illustrator behind sleeves for DELAIN, BATTLE BEAST and MANOWAR.
Sehlin did not only master the record. He also turns up as a guest vocalist on "Burning Sky," one of the album's centrepieces, where his grittier delivery cuts against the soaring symphonic arrangement around it.
The reference points are the obvious European ones — NIGHTWISH, EPICA, POWERWOLF, DELAIN, WITHIN TEMPTATION — but the band have been fairly direct about wanting to bridge that grandiosity with something more recognisably American, describing their own sound as intricate rhythmic timing, cinematic instrumental storytelling and dark, majestic wonder. In practice that means European scale filtered through the sharper, drier production habits of the modern Nashville scene.
The album was preceded by the singles "Burning Sky," "Cascade" and "Evermore," each with an official video.
Listen to "Out Of Darkness": ffm.to/vlkout