Fir Bolg have a second album. Triskelion arrives on 27 November through Schwarzdorn Production with thirteen songs on it, which is thirteen years after Towards Ancestral Lands and the kind of gap that usually means a band has quietly ended.
The French trio have always built their black metal out of Celtic material rather than decorating it with the subject. The first album already carried traditional instruments and acoustic passages against the distortion. On this one those elements are further forward: bouzouki, traditional percussion and older instrumental textures sit inside the arrangements instead of between the songs.
That is a harder thing to do than it sounds. A bouzouki in a black metal song is either a tool or a costume, and the difference shows up in whether the riff needs it. "Drunemeton", the advance song, is out with a video and is the only part of the record anyone outside the label has heard.
The subjects are pagan rites, ancestral belief and mythology, which in this corner of French black metal has been the constant since the 2008 demo. Thirteen years of silence did not change what the band are for.