FAROE FRIDAY: METAL INVASION

If you live in any city in the US with a population topping 200,000, you are likely in for a visit from some hard rocking Faroese men.

The nice young men pictured above are Týr, they're a heavy metal band from Runavík. They describe their music this way: "The vikings have come to life again and are very impressed with electric musical instruments and are anxious to resurrect their heathen world."

Týr have been slowly building a reputation in Europe, and now they're trying to conquer America. They've launched an ambitious tour of the US and Canada. They're playing 28 shows over the course of one month. Týr will play the big cities like New York and LA, but will also be visiting smaller places like Allentown, Tulsa, and Rochester, NY.

In mid-March, they will play a show in Seattle, then play in Salt Lake City the next day. That's a brutal schedule, but if the vikings could paddle across the Atlantic in wooden boats, I'm sure these guys will have no problem with the tour. Their complete tour schedule can be found on their myspace page.

While hardly a metal-head, I plan on attending the Portland show on March 14th (or the San Francisco show a day earlier, if Kent gets his way). I'm also hoping to interview the band for a project I'm working on. More on that later.

This week's Faroe photo comes from Runavík. It's a fairly non-descript town, notable for having a busy-ish harbor, an alcohol store, and one of the only hotels outside of Torshavn. But we chose this town because it's the place Týr call home. It hardly seems like a place where dark metal fantasies are born... but you never know.