Watch a lyric video for Cnoc An Tursa's epic new battle song!

Considering Scotland’s own rich, battle-studded history and glorious scenery, you wouldn’t expect the tide of ‘Heritage black metal’ to be confined to the south of Hadrian’s Wall. Former labelmates of Winterfylleth, Cnoc An Tursa – Gaelic for ‘Hill of the Standing Stone’ – have been using their Falkirk home as the source of sweeping grandeur associated with the movement for a decade now, and their 2013 debut album, The Giants Of Auld, was a stirring take on symphonic folk and black metal, bringing in strong Gaelic influences but reaching for the epic through sheer muscle and powerful, mid-paced grooves rather than overdoing the bombast.

Now the five-piece are returning to the fray with a new, album The Forty Five, due on February 17 via Apocalyptic Witchcraft and based around the Jacobite Uprising in 1745, waged by Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, to wrest the British throne from George II.

If this news stirs your beating heart, than raise your shield in triumph because we have an exclusive preview in the righteous form of a lyric video to the track The Yellow Locks Of Charlie, based on the traditional battle song by one Henry Scott Riddell. Featuring live footage, roving scans across scene-setting artwork and a questionable choice of font, The Yellow Locks Of Charlie is an eight-minute epic that will have chests swelling, spears thrusting and kilts flapping with foe-frightening intensity.

Sound your pipes, shout “For glenn and glory!” and enter the epic realm of The Yellow Locks Of Charlie below!

March upon Cnoc An Tursa’s Facebook page here!

And enjoy the spoils of war by ordering The Forty Five here!

Having freelanced regularly for the Melody Maker and Kerrang!, and edited the extreme metal monthly, Terrorizer, for seven years, Jonathan is now the overseer of all the album and live reviews in Metal Hammer. Bemoans his obsolete superpower of being invisible to Routemaster bus conductors, finds men without sideburns slightly circumspect, and thinks songs that aren’t about Satan, swords or witches are a bit silly.