The title says it all...
it's as good as they say it is. i gotta admit that i was skeptical but i finally broke down a grabbed a copy of Sagas. i can't speak for anyone else's personal opinion, but objectively in the metal community this is getting hailed as the album of the year (at least until the upcoming Wintersun album drops)... i mean, Encyclopaedia Metallum has it rated at 100% and there's not many albums on there that get perfect ratings across the board.
Mind you, it's not Enslaved and it's not viking-era Bathory (who created the whole viking metal sub-genre of black metal); it's modern with good, clean production and keyboards, but it also has folk/traditional instrumentation.
The technicality and immersion of the music are pretty mind-blowing, and the vocals are varied and are on par with the rest of the music. there are moments as varied in imagery as possible: feasting and banquet in the mead hall, battle, honor/pride, conquest/exploration... everything you would expect. I would even say it focuses less on battle/war/warrior-ism than any other Viking metal i've heard, which is weird considering i thought i would dislike this aspect. but once i listened it became irrelevant. the longer you listen, the more you get into it and love it for what it is and not what other things are or whatever. oh... and you DEFINATELY get your brutality and aggression, blast beats and black vocals. Remember that viking metal is still a SUB-GENRE of Black Metal, despite how progressive, power-y, or whatever other people may say [like this other dude that reviewed this album calling it Blackened Epic Folk Viking Some-such... Viking metal IS Black Metal so it can't very well be Blackened... that would be like serving up a steak cooked in an incinerator?].
Sagas runs the whole gamut. Don't have any reservations. this album WILL get you pumped. i suggest drinking beer while listening \m/

NOT AS EPIC AS HOPED
I was so hoping this was going to be the "all killer no filler" follow-up that everyone made it out to be.
For those not in the know, Germany's EQUILIBRIUM play a blackened pagan/folk metal and they really delivered with their debut album, "Turis Fratyr".

They still sound the same, more or less, but the main difference, I see, is in the quality of the songs.

Their last album had the ultimate crowd-pleaser with the short but sweet "Met". This time there are two other short songs. "Heimwaerts" tries really hard to be another "Met", but just doesn't cut it. The second shorty is purely instrumental and apart from the fact that it is a nice change of pace it still comes up . . . short.

The longer songs are where they fare better. In my opinion, the best song is track 9, "Die Weide und der Fluss", which despite its lengthy run-time of about 7 minutes still manages to entertain throughout. The track following is a minute longer and still almost as good.

Not to be outdone, time-wise, is the last track, "Mana", a 15-minute plus monster of an instrumental. I'd say this one is between average and good, but it's not great.

For the most part I felt many of the songs were too repetitive, especially in the drumming and growling departments. I think "Blut im Auge" was a fine example of this.

Fortunately you can acquire these songs individually as mp3's here from Amazon, so I'd definitely recommend going that route, first.

Also of note: There are multiple versions of this CD. Some (like mine ordered from Amazon.de) come with a DVD (beware of region, though). The booklet in my copy is an ugly brown paper with black writing on it, making the lyrics utterly unreadable whether you can read German or not.

If you're still wondering where to get your German metal fix, try out FINSTERFORST or maybe THRUDVANGAR. For me though, the leader of the wolf pack in German pagan/folk metal is MENHIR's "Hildebrandslied".