OSI AND THE JUPITER Nordlige Rúnaskog CD. Digipak

Helmed by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Sean Kratz, OSI AND THE JUPITER first emerged from its cocoon in 2016 with the debut album Halls of the Wolf. Led by the ever-poignant, goosebump-inducing cello work of co-conspirator Kakophonix, the album set forth the band’s aesthetic, which would come to even fuller fruition the next year with Uthuling Hyl. Not surprisingly, Uthuling Hyl became many people’s introduction to OSI AND THE JUPITER, and garnered the group favorable comparisons to Warduna, Forndom, Of the Wand and the Moon, Sonne Hagal, and Vàli among others – esteemed company, to be sure.

However, OSI AND THE JUPITER are, by comparison, an American entity, which imbues their creations with a strange and totally unique disconnect from the Old Europa similarly channeled by those aforementioned contemporaries. There exists within their creative sphere a distant yet psychically strong conduit to the lore and traditions of the ancients – a veritable bloodline that empowers Kratz and Kakophonix. A surer-footed suggestion of such came with the Grå Hest 7″ this past August, and now fully blossoms with the band’s masterful third album, Nordlige Rúnaskog. Quite possibly the most perfect music for autumnal fires and the dying of summer’s light, here OSI AND THE JUPITER weave wistful ruminations on old days, The Old Ways, and the ways in which the turning of the seasons mark our lives. It’s every inch the superior to the group’s preceding recordings, and yet no marked changes have occurred within this iron-girded aesthetic. Simply, Nordlige Rúnaskog is the sound of OSI AND THE JUPITER at the height of their magickal powers, and we are all the richer for bearing witness to their plaintive paeans.