Double Icelandic Music Prize winner Eivør, Emmy winner John Lunn and celebrated composer Danny Saul today release a new album, The Last Kingdom – Destiny Is All, featuring music created for and inspired by the hit Netflix show The Last Kingdom. The new album – which will also receive a Record Store Day vinyl release on April 22 – is comprised of music created for the soundtracks of the fourth and fifth seasons of The Last Kingdom, as well as new material from the new feature film Seven Kings Must Die, released last week and charting at number one on Netflix in over four countries. The new album arrives today alongside a new video for The Last Kingdom – Slight Return recorded live at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. Watch here:
Faroese electronic artist/throat singer Eivør announced the album with a brooding single ‘The Beloveds’ – built around the chanting traditional to the Faroese folk music she grew up with. The song arrived with a video capturing the opening sequence of Season 5 of The Last Kingdom. “Those chants are very much a big part of my culture; it’s something I remember hearing my grandfather doing when I was younger,” she says. Watch here:
Eivør is part of a new wave of Scandinavian artists (alongside Heilung and Wardruna) building passionate international fan bases with music that honours ancient cultural & musical folklore. At last count, Eivør’s music has been streamed over 93 million time . Winner of both the Nordic Council Music Prize (previously awarded to Björk) and a double winner of the Icelandic Music Prize, Eivør has appeared on Jools Holland, featured on the soundtracks for Hunger Games, Metal Gear Solid and God of War, and counts John Grant and Asgeir amongst her fanbase.
Eivør’s modern electronica and throat singing has long been deeply informed by the brutal beauty of the Faroes, since growing up on one of the northerly islands, surrounded by the windswept North Atlantic. She immersed herself in music from 13, fronting a trip-hop band after discovering albums by Massive Attack and Portishead.
When John Lunn and Eivør first began working together back in 2015, they quickly discovered the kind of chemistry that leads to rarefied magic. Chosen to create the soundtrack to The Last Kingdom – a wildly popular series set in Viking-ravaged 9th century England – the two musicians soon dreamed up a darkly hypnotic sound that draws from the vast imagination and sophisticated musicianship Lunn has brought to his scoring work, and the otherworldly vocals and genre-warping artistry Eivør has infused into her nine acclaimed albums. In a continuation of their musical partnership, Lunn, Eivør & Saul now deliver their most elaborately realised output yet—a full-length project expanding on their work for The Last Kingdom, resulting in an immersive album that inhabits a strangely enchanted world all its own.
Lunn, Saul, and Eivør’s collaboration has continually defied sonic convention;
“On the show there’s a lot of epic battles and other moments you’d normally associate with orchestral music, but I wanted to do something new and different and focus on electronic instruments,” says Lunn. “I was looking for something to accompany that and saw a video of Eivør and her extraordinary throat singing, and she completely captured the energy that The Last Kingdom required.”
An artist who’s endlessly mined inspiration from the dramatic landscape of her Nordic homeland—and who’s earned comparison to Kate Bush in the pages of MOJO—Eivør felt an immediate affinity for the source material. “Growing up in the Faroe Islands, I was always fascinated with the Vikings, so the series feels very close to my heart,” says Eivør, who also recently featured on the God of War Ragnarök score and on the soundtrack to the hit video game. “It felt so natural to fit my singing into what John had come up with, and many of the lyrics I ended up writing were inspired by the old Nordic sagas that imprinted on me as a child.”
Throughout, Lunn, Saul, and Eivør have followed their most experimental impulses and adorned their songs with unexpected details, such as the jazz-like textures and gorgeously eerie beats of ‘Blues For Halig’.
“This project has changed my approach to my music, and reconnected me with certain parts of myself that I may have left behind at some point,” says Eivør, who’s also incorporated songs from Destiny Is All into her live set. “I hope that the album helps The Last Kingdom come even more alive in the minds of people who love the series. I hope that in its own way, it can become part of the soundtrack to their lives.”
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