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After a (too) long pause, here's finally the letter I!

The band:
In Extremo (Latin: At the Edge) is a German medieval metal band originating from Berlin. The band's musical style combines metal with medieval traditional songs, blending the sound of the standard rock/metal instruments with historical instruments (such as bagpipes, harp, hurdy-gurdy and shawm). Versions of well-known traditional/medieval ballads make up the main part of their repertoire, but the band has written an increasing share of original material in recent years. Their own material is written in German, whilst the traditional songs are in a variety of languages, including Gaelic, Spanish, English, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, French, Estonian, Galician, Hebrew, Latin, Occitan, Old High German.

In Extremo began as two projects: a nameless, purely medieval band, and a rock band. They became known at that time through frequent appearances at medieval market meetings, at which they performed their acoustic pieces and sold CDs of their renditions of traditional songs. During the recording for the 1995 season, Michael Rhein (alias Das letzte Einhorn, engl. "The Last Unicorn") found the project name "In Extremo".

The increasing number of visitors, success of their CDs, and the popular interest, as well as cross-pollination from groups such as Corvus Corax and Bathory, encouraged In Extremo in 1995 to attempt to start a band combining bagpipes and other traditional instruments with rock guitars. The result was the current incarnation of In Extremo, a rock group that integrates modern instruments like the drum set, electric bass and guitar with the acoustic elements previously used for the medieval songs, and which plays both types of music as well as a hybrid of the two.

In August 1996, they began work on the first In Extremo album, which already contained two tracks of the new rock project. Because the album had no official name, it became known as "In Extremo Gold" because of the golden covers. In February 1997 it quickly sold out in Medieval markets.

In Extremo played separately as a medieval and a rock band, until on March 29, 1997, when they played their first live rock concert. Since that time, they have given this date as their date of establishment. The two projects were officially merged on January 11, 1998. April 1998 saw the first "high occupancy" In Extremo concert in the Rabenstein castle in Brandenburg.

Over the years, their music became more heavy metal based, while at the same time becoming increasingly commercially successful. The classical instruments, however - bagpipes, shawms, and lutes - still play a large role. The band is likewise noted for their conspicuous stage costumes and known for using pyrotechnics in their concerts, including "Der Morgenstern" (engl. "Morning star") playing cymbals which have been set on fire.

To this date the band released an enourmous 15 albums (5 live albums, 1 "best of" album and 9 studio albums). The last was released in 2011 and it's called "Sterneneisen" (engl. "star iron").

The song:
Since I only followed this band until they released their 5th studio album "Sünder ohne Zügel" (engl. "Unbridled Sinners ") my song choice obviously is limited to those albums.
This is a live version of "Villeman Og Magnhild", so you can see the band playing all those nice instruments. It's the fith song on "Weckt die Toten!" (engl. "Wake the dead!"), which is their third studio album.
This was recorded at the Wacken Open Air. The quality of the video is a bit low, though.

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The cover: