“Tuatha Dé Danann” refers to mythological pre-Christian inhabitants of Ireland, and contestedly translates as “peoples of the goddess Danu”. If an entirely appropriate name for an Irish folk metal band, what makes Tuatha de Danann especially odd is that they hail from Varginha, Brazil. The band can, moreover, claim to be one of the earliest-formed acts to perform folk metal, dating back to 1995 (though they quite recently broke up.)
Tuatha de Danann are fundamentally power metal–the definitive metal genre of Central and Southern America (I was in Costa Rica when Iron Maiden played there in 2009 and you’d have thought it was a national holiday). I’ve never been a big power metal enthusiast, so I never had much of a desire to explore Tuatha de Danann’s albums further, but the opening track to Tingaralatingadun, released in 2001, does a delightful (and historically, exceptionally early) job of flawlessly merging power and folk metal in a manner somewhat similar to Elvenking during their finer years. It is a bit more earthy than Elvenking, much to its advantage, and the effect of the constant guitar solo doodling, whistle, and generally airy production creates a lighthearted, mischievous vibe that I would describe as more fantasy than folk–or at least, it invokes a more fairytale superstition of early morning magic. Follow these guys into a cave and you might find a few hundred years have passed on your way back out.
The biggest selling point for me in this song is the tone of the whistle. I cannot sufficiently emphasize my love for whistles. There is no instrument I enjoy more, either to listen to or to play (banjos get a close second, though I’d be kidding myself if I claimed I could play one). “The Dance of the Little Ones” is especially successful in generating a sort of ‘through the fog’ whistle tone which I’ve heard employed by such diverse musicians as Belarusian folk band Stary Olsa (Стары Ольса) and Japanese video game composer Miki Higashino, and which I desperately wish I knew how to reproduce.
I want to hop on the bandwagon. It would be a little silly for me to post my real top 10; for one thing, it would include four Krallice tracks. That aside, nearly everything I’d put on it I’ve either posted on this site as a Song of the Day or included in both my review of its album and my top albums post. So to make this a bit different from my past posts, I’m going to limit myself to one song per band, stick to stuff that I imagine might appeal to people who aren’t interested in extreme metal, and keep it on the catchy side. I’ll list a more honest top 10 at the end.
10. Powerwolf – Son of a Wolf (from Blood of the Saints)
As such, my tenth place selection is about as metal as it’s going to get. Powerwolf’s Blood of the Saints might be simple and repetitive, but it’s about the catchiest power/heavy metal album I’ve ever heard. It indulges the same guilty pleasure for me as Lordi and Twisted Sister–two bands that inexplicably pump me up despite being entirely tame. It also offers some amazing operatic vocals and Dracula keyboards, the cheesiness of which can be easily forgiven. Son of a Wolf might be one of the more generic tracks in a sense, but it’s the one most often stuck in my head.
9. Alestorm – Barrett’s Privateers (from Back Through Time)
The only thing I love more than traditional folk and sea chanties is folk punk and metal. When the latter covers the former, I’m in bliss. Alestorm are emerging as the sort of Dropkick Murphys of metal with all their covers lately, and I hope they keep it up. I loved Barrett’s Privateers before what you’re hearing ever happened, and the metal version delights me to no end.
8. The Decemberists – Rox in the Box (from The King is Dead)
The Decemberists really toned it down this year. Where The Hazards of Love could be described as an epic rock opera, The King is Dead sticks to simple, pleasant folk. But Colin Meloy thoroughly researches pretty much every subject he’s ever tackled, and The King is Dead pays ample homage to its predecessors. Rox in the Box incorporates Irish traditional song Raggle Taggle Gypsy with delightful success.
7. Nekrogoblikon – Goblin Box (from Stench)
With a keen eye towards contemporary folk metal like Alestorm and Finntroll, melodic death classics like In Flames and Children of Bodom, and much else besides, former gimmick band Nekrogoblikon really forged their own unique sound in the world of folk metal in 2011. At least half of the album is this good. Stench is the most unexpected surprise the year had to offer by far.
6. Korpiklaani – Surma (from Ukon Wacka)
Korpiklaani almost always end their albums with something special, and 2011 is no exception. The melody of Surma is beautiful, and Jonne Järvelä’s metal take on traditional Finnish vocals is as entertaining as ever.
5. Turisas – Hunting Pirates (from Stand Up and Fight)
I couldn’t find a youtube video that effectively captured the full scope of Turisas’s sound in such limited bitrates, but believe me, it’s huge. Go buy the album and find out for yourselves. Unlike Varangian Way, not every track is this good, but on a select number Turisas appear in their finest form. Adventurous, exciting, epic beyond compare, this band delivers with all of the high definition special effects of a Hollywood blockbuster.
4. The Flight of Sleipnir – Transcendence (from Essence of Nine)
Essence of Nine kicks off with a kaleidoscope of everything that makes stoner metal great, while reaching beyond the genre to incorporate folk and Akerfeldt-esque vocals. A beautifully constructed song, it crushes you even as it floats through the sky. I could imagine Tony Iommi himself rocking out to this one.
3. Boris – Black Original (from New Album)
From crust punk to black metal, there’s nothing Boris don’t do well, and 2011 has shown more than ever that there’s no style they’ll hesitate from dominating. I don’t know what’s been going on in the past few years with this popular rise of 80s sounds and weird electronics. I don’t listen to it, so I can’t relate. But if I expected it sounded anything nearly as good as what Boris pulled off this year I’d be all over it.
2. Tom Waits – Chicago (from Bad as Me)
Bad as Me kicks off with one of my favorite Tom Waits songs to date. It’s a timeless theme for him, but it feels more appropriate now than ever, and his dirty blues perfectly capture the sort of fear and excitement of packing up and seeking out a better life.
1. Dropkick Murphys – Take ‘Em Down (from Going Out in Style)
In a year just begging for good protest songs, Flogging Molly tried really hard and fell flat. Dropkick Murphys, another band you’d expect to join the cause, released perhaps their most generic album to date (still good mind you, but not a real chart topper). Take ‘Em Down is kind of out of place on the album, but it’s DKM to the core, and as best I can gather it’s an original song, not a cover of a traditional track. If so, it’s probably the most appropriate thing written all year. (The video is fan made.)
If you’re interested in my actual top 10, it runs something like this:
10. Falkenbach – Where His Ravens Fly…
9. Waldgeflüster – Kapitel I: Seenland
8. Liturgy – High Gold
7. Endstille – Endstille (Völkerschlächter)
6. Blut aus Nord – Epitome I
5. Krallice – Intro/Inhume
4. Liturgy – Harmonia
3. Krallice – Diotima
2. Krallice – Telluric Rings
1. Krallice – Dust and Light
And that excludes so many dozens of amazing songs that it seems almost pointless to post it.
The years I most actively indulge my musical interests are the ones I find most difficult to wrap up in any sort of nice cohesive summary. December always begins with a feeling that I’ve really built up a solid basis on which to rate the best albums of the year, and it tends to end with the realization that I’ve really only heard a minute fraction of what’s out there. I’m going to limit this to my top 15. Anything beyond that is just too arbitrary–the long list of new albums I’ve still yet to hear will ultimately reconfigure it beyond recognition.
15. Thantifaxath – Thantifaxath EP
Thantifaxath’s debut EP might only be 15 minutes long, but that was more than enough to place it high on my charts. The whole emerging post/prog-bm sound has been largely a product of bands with the resources to refine it, and it’s quite refreshing to hear sounds reminiscent of recent Enslaved without any of the studio gloss. That, and I get a sort of B-side outer space horror vibe from it that’s not so easy to come by. (Recommended track: Violently Expanding Nothing)
14. Craft – Void
This is the straight-up, no bullshit black metal album of the year. It doesn’t try anything fancy or original. It’s just good solid mid-tempo bm–brutal, evil, conjuring, and unforgiving. Hail Satan etc. (Recommended track: any of them)
13. Turisas – Stand Up and Fight
Stand Up and Fight doesn’t hold a candle to The Varangian Way, but I never really expected it to. As a follow-up to one of my all-time favorite albums, it does a solid job of maintaining that immensely epic, triumphal sound they landed on in 2007. It lacks their previous work’s continuity, both in quality and in theme, but it’s still packed with astoundingly vivid imagery and exciting theatrics that render it almost more of a movie than an album. (Recommended tracks: Venetoi! Prasinoi!, Hunting Pirates)
12. Endstille – Infektion 1813
Swedish-style black metal seldom does much for me, and it’s hard to describe just what appeals to me so much about Germany’s Endstille. But just as Verführer caught me by pleasant surprise two years ago, Infektion 1813 managed to captivate me in spite of all expectations to the contrary. Like Marduk (the only other band of the sort that occasionally impresses me), they stick to themes of modern warfare, but Endstille’s musical artillery bombardments carry a sense of something sinister that Marduk lacks. The dark side of human nature Endstille explores isn’t shrouded in enticing mystery–it’s something so thoroughly historically validated that we’d rather just pretend it doesn’t exist at all. The final track, Völkerschlächter, is one of the best songs of the year. Stylistically subdued, it pummels the listener instead with a long list of political and military leaders responsible for mass murder, named in a thick German accent over a seven second riff that’s repeated for 11 minutes. It’s a brutal realization that the sensations black metal tends to arouse are quite real and quite deplorable, and it will leave you feeling a little sick inside.
11. Nekrogoblikon – Stench
Nekrogoblikon released a folk metal parody album in 2006 that was good for laughs and really nothing else. The music was pretty awful, but that was intentional. It was a joke, with no presumption to be any good as anything but a joke. They’re the last band on earth I ever expected, a full six years after the fact, to pop back up with a really fucking solid sound. But Stench is good. I mean, Stench is really good. It’s still comical in theme, but the music has been refined beyond measure. Quirky, cheesy guitar and keyboard doodles have become vivid images of little flesh-eating gremlins dancing around your feet, whiny mock-vocals have taken the shape of pretty solid Elvenking-esque power metal, pretty much everything about them has grown into a legitimate melo-death and power infused folk metal sound. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not meant to be taken seriously, but they’re now of Finntroll caliber. (Recommended tracks: Goblin Box, Gallows & Graves, A Feast)
10. Týr – The Lay of Thrym
I thought By the Light of the Northern Star was a fairly weak album, and because The Lay of Thrym maintains some of the stylistic changes they underwent then, a part of me keeps wanting to say it can’t be as good as say, Land or Eric the Red. But of all the albums I acquired in 2011, I’ve probably listened to this one the most. Týr have one of the most unique sounds on the market, and it’s thoroughly incapable of ever boring me or growing old. Heri Joensen’s consistently excellent vocal performance alone is enough to make them perpetual year-end contenders. (Recommended track: Hall of Freedom)
9. Waldgeflüster – Femundsmarka – Eine Reise in drei Kapiteln
This is some of the most endearing black metal I’ve heard in a while. Intended as a musical reminiscence of Winterherz’ journey through Femundsmarka National Park in Scandinavia, it’s a beautiful glorification of nature that takes some of the best accomplishments of Drudkh and Agalloch and adds to them a very uplifting vibe. Someone made an 8 minute compilation of the album on youtube which does a good job at previewing without revealing all of its finest moments. (Recommended track: Kapitel I: Seenland)
8. Ygg – Ygg
Ygg is an hour-long trance, evoking ancient gods in a way that only Slavic metal can. You could probably pick apart the music and discover plenty of flaws, but that would miss the point. I think that a lot of these Ukrainian and Russian bands are true believers, and that the purpose of music like this is more to create an experience in the listener than to be good for its own sake. This is a spiritual journey, and if it fails to move you as such it will probably come off as rather repetitive and generic, but I find it impressively effective. (Recommended track: Ygg)
7. Blut aus Nord – 777: Sect(s)
I don’t know where to put this really. I could just as easily have labeled it second best album of the year. Dropping it down to 7th might seem a little unjustified, but eh, this is a list of my top albums, not of the “best” albums of the year. There’s no denying Sect(s) credit as a brilliant masterpiece, but it’s an ode to madness. I mean, this music scares the shit out of me, and if that means it’s accomplished something no other album has, that also means I don’t particularly “enjoy” listening to it. (Recommended track: Epitome I)
6. Altar of Plagues – Mammal
I never did listen to Mammal as actively as I would have liked. I never sat down and gave it my undivided attention from start to finish. But it’s served as a background piece for many late nights at work. It zones me in–stimulates my senses without ever distracting them from the task at hand. I don’t feel like I can really say much about what makes it great, because that’s not the sort of thing I’ve considered while listening to it, but I absolutely love it. It’s a big improvement from White Tomb, which was itself an excellent album, and more so than most other releases of 2011 I will probably continue to listen to it frequently in years to come. (Recommended track: Neptune is Dead)
5. Primordial – Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand (track: No Grave Deep Enough)
Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand is by no means perfect. It’s got a few sub-par tracks detracting from the full start to finish experience, but when it’s at its best all else can be easily forgiven. Call it folk metal or call it black metal, whichever you prefer, but first and foremost call it Irish, with every good thing that might entail. The vocals are outstanding, the music rocks out in folk fashion without ever relenting from its metal force, and while the lyrics don’t always make sense, they always hit like a fucking truck. Where they do all come together, delivered with Nemtheanga’s vast and desperate bellows, the result is overwhelming. O Death, where are your teeth that gnaw on the bones of fabled men? O Death, where are your claws that haul me from the grave? (Other recommended tracks: The Puritan’s Hand, Death of the Gods)
4. Falconer – Armod (track: Griftefrid)
Prior to 2011 I’d largely written Falconer off as one of those power metal acts that were just a little too cheesy to ever excite me. Maybe it was bad timing. Maybe I just happened to hear them for the first time while Kristoffer Göbel was filling in on vocals. Or maybe Armod is just their magnum opus–a spark of genius they’ve never neared before. Flawless if we ignore the “bonus tracks”, Armod takes that early folk metal sound Vintersorg pioneered with Otyg, merges it perfectly with power metal, and offers up 11 of the most well-written and excellently produced songs of the year. Mathias Blad’s vocals are absolutely phenomenal. (Other recommended tracks: Herr Peder Och Hans Syster)
3. Falkenbach – Tiurida (track: Sunnavend)
A lot of people might voice the legitimate complaint that Tiurida, Vratyas Vakyas’s first studio album in six years, sounds absolutely indistinguishable from his prior four. For me, that’s exactly why it ranks so high. Vakyas landed on a completely unique, instantly recognizable sound which, alongside Bathory, defined viking metal as a genre, and he’s refused to change it one bit. I fell in love with this album ten years ago. (Other recommended tracks: Where His Ravens Fly…)
2. Liturgy – Aesthethica (track: Harmonia)
Yes, Liturgy. It’s immature, childish, and imperfect, but it’s uplifting in a completely new way. No matter how far Hunt-Hendrix might go to embarrass himself and his band mates, behind all of his pompous babble there just might be some truth to it. (Other recommended tracks: True Will)
1. Krallice – Diotima (track: Dust and Light)
More than the album of the year, Diotima is one of the greatest albums ever made. I can’t fathom the amount of skill it must take to perform with the speed and precision that these guys do, but if they battered down a physical barrier to metal in 2008, they finally grasped hold of what lies beyond it in 2011. They claim that the songs on their first three albums were all written at the same time by Mick Barr and Colin Marston, before their self-titled debut. If that’s the case, then it must be the experience of performing together and the creative contributions of Lev Weinstein and Nick McMaster that raised Diotima to a higher level. It’s not just that they’ve improved in every way imaginable; the songs themselves are overwhelming, breathtaking, and chaotic to a degree they’d never before accomplished. Krallice perform an unwieldy monster that took a few albums to thoroughly overcome. Now they’re in complete control, and their absolutely brilliant song-writing can shine through. With the exception of the dubious Litany of Regrets, this is possibly the greatest album I have ever heard. (Other recommended tracks: Inhume, Diotima, Telluric Rings)
The latest “Song of the Day” comes from those metal gods who make up the power metal band, Blind Guardian. It’s a song which begins their latest full-length album, At The Edge of Time, and also a reworking of the song the band created for the console rpg title, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. The song I’ve chosen this time around is “Sacred Worlds”.
The song was originally titled “Sacred” and was introduced in the game the band made it for during a quaint sequence where virtual, fantasy versions of the band do headbanging show in your typical fantasy inn populated by orcs, goblins, trolls and other find gentle creatures. While the original song was great on its own when the band reworked it with a brand new orchestral intro and outro the song took on a more epic sound.
It’s a pretty long song at a running time of 9:17 and is one of the better songs in Blind Guardian’s latest album. It’s also one of thew songs in my Skyrim playlist which I listen to nonstop while playing in Bethesda Softworks’ latest epic rpg title.
Sacred Worlds
The realm’s bleeding It suffers Old and weak
No further arguing There is war at hand The system’s failing Engines running
Then after all I sense the end is dawning These lunatics deny the truth
I know I will not fail There’ll be
War it’s now or never We shall stand together One by one This world is sacred (I’m coming home) War it’s now or never We shall stand together One by one This world is sacred I’m coming home
Coming home
You chase in twilight And you know You will be on your own On your own
The misery shown I’ll be alone in this hour I’ll face the unknown Witness the end
I’m bleeding, I’m fading Here in my final hour When long-lost memories return And a voice keeps calling “All dead and gone It’s out of hand Life is in motion” I’m wishing, I’m fading “Time to wake up Face the truth”
I’m sinking I’m drowning There’s no doubt, no regret “Time to reveal now” This is no illusion It is real Carry on the flame It’s not over now Watch me, I will rise Time to reveal now
I know I will not fail Anymore
I’ll go on forever All that really matters Blessed realm This world is sacred (I’m coming home) War it’s now or never We shall stand together One by one This world is sacred (I’m coming home)
Yesterday’s gone There’s no today, no tomorrow I’m raised from the dead The ritual failed
There at the gates I’m left alone in this hour Driven insane I am left alone
And now I drown in deepest shadows While the golden hall is sealed I’m wishing I’m fading And I’m part of the machine
My eyes are the eyes of a dead man And I feel the unholy stream The source of my power T-energy I’m in control
I will live forever All that really matters Find the one This world is sacred (I’m coming home) War it’s now or never We shall stand together One by one This world is sacred I’m coming home
I spread my wings But keep on falling I should have known I can see it coming The war is over There’s whispering in the wind Just let me out of here There is no way There’s no end While all the suffering goes on All that I know Is that I’m not insane It’s not over
Up until late July, Nekrogoblikon were a nearly forgotten gimmick. Their first and only previous album, Goblin Island, was released in 2006, and that was the last I ever heard of them. Aside from telling the story of an extra-terrestrial goblin invasion of the most heinous sort (they even ruin Christmas), it featured, among other things, sound clips of the band screaming like little girls, an actual stereotypical Christmas song, a cover of In Flames’ Artifacts of the Black Rain with all the lyrics substituted for banter about goblins, and a dance beat chiptune outro. Musically, it was simultaneously a mockery of a lot of the bands that probably influenced them and a pretty decent, enjoyable imitation of them. But it was never funny in say, a GWAR or Alestorm sort of way. It was more like a Weird Al thing–a novelty. You laugh, but you really don’t want your friends to know you listen to it, and you never play through it twice in a row.
Goblin Box
Their new album is a very different beast. Over the past five years they’ve actually matured into really good song-writers. Don’t get me wrong, Goblin Island had some really catchy tracks, but in the music just as in the lyrics there was a sort of audible immaturity, by design of course, that made light of the bands they were imitating. On Stench this notion is more internal. That is, they’re still parodying Children of Bodom, Finntroll, and just about anything in between, but instead of hearing a bunch of kids making a joke you hear a bunch of goblins being goblins. The immaturity is no longer in the execution; it’s encased in really solid music that, given better production value, could rival many of the very same albums it pokes and prods.
Basically, on Stench the line between a musical parody and a successful cross-genre epic metal masterpiece is very grey indeed. Yet the lyrics are just as blatantly whimsical as ever. The result is hard to swallow, because it’s so good and so bad at the same time. I imagine the spoken ending of this song is a rip on Rhapsody of Fire’s infamously lame spoken lines; it goes approximately “The humans had opened the box to torture and maim all kinds of magical creatures, but the goblins were not to be trifled with. No, not to be trifled with at all. And as the humans laid there, a pulsating mound of bone and flesh, dead and mutilated beyond all hope and reason, the goblins feasted upon their rotting corpses, filling the halls with the shrill sound of chilling laughter….. Forever!” And yet when you listen to it, beneath the cheese you get the feeling that it’s a really badass ending.
It took quite a while for me to get sufficiently passed the fact that it’s a parody to enjoy it in its own right. That was Stench’s initial impact: a part of me was left feeling like I’d been cheated out of something awesome on par with Ensiferum and Equilibrium, but the more I listened to it the more I wanted to click repeat, plant my hand firmly in the center of my face, and grin from ear to ear underneath it. At this point I can safely say I love it unconditionally.
Gallows & Graves
There’s something of a third dynamic going on here as well, and it’s what really tips the scale towards greatness. In some odd capacity this really is, well, goblin metal. If we think of them as those short, mischievous little tinkers that are a good bit like gnomes with the added plus of being spawns of Satan, you can actually hear something of this in the music. Goblins ARE both comical and evil, and while Goblin Island was too much of a joke (albeit a good one) to capture this, Stench pulls it off. Trolls and vikings and pirates have all acquired a sort of musical imagery, much of which isn’t meant to be taken entirely seriously. The idea of a goblin is a good deal less serious than all of those to begin with, and if I was going to “seriously” create a metal sound to capture them, well, Stench seems pretty on the mark. The frantic intro/chorus melody of Gallows & Graves and the kind of childish clear vocals really do call to mind some small, obnoxious, vicious little bugger hopping around your feet, and this same musical imagery reoccurs throughout Stench with a consistency that Goblin Island lacked.
A Feast
It’s really hard to talk about what Nekrogoblikon “accomplished” on this album with a straight face, but the fact of the matter is Stench is really damn good. They manage to successfully combine elements of more metal sub-genres than I can count. It’s also got the clever bonus of thematically justifying all of its potential negatives. Goblins are as obnoxious as they are evil, right, so if they’re mocking a bunch of their metal predecessors musically it’s only natural. This is goblin metal.
Over the top gimmicks have been helping otherwise average bands make names for themselves since times unknown. Rarely do they backfire, but with Powerwolf I just don’t know. The music on this album is incredibly good. Having never heard them before, I thought maybe they just drew a lyrical blank, sort of burning out on their gimmick while still steamrolling as musicians. But apparently, from what I’ve read at least, all four of their albums are pretty much identical thematically.
Sanctified with Dynamite
That is pretty strange considering Blood of the Saints is itself so thematically narrow that I get the feeling half of the songs use the exact same lyrics. I mean, I criticized Alestorm this year for pushing the line “get drunk or die” a bit farther than necessary at the expense of more clever lyrics, but compared to this album Back Through Time is pure poetry.
Each track pretty much consists of five lines: the name of the song, something about dying, something about wolves, something about blood, and the word “hallelujah”. That makes the opening track, Sanctified with Dynamite, the most lyrically diverse song on the album, because it is the only track that does not mention blood, wolves, or dying in the title.
They wrote a song called “We Drink Your Blood” and a song called “All We Need is Blood” and put them on the same album. Really? You would think the conceptual powers of an angry eight year old would translate to the music itself.
We Drink Your Blood
But in fact, this album is undeniably great. Their sound is powerful and enormous. The operatic vocals, the sinister organ, the production as a whole, everything just surrounds you and kicks your ass. The heavy metal choruses are always catchy in spite of the far too discernible lyrics. Every track is memorable. Musically, there’s just no getting around the quality of this album.
Why couldn’t they be singing in German or Romanian, their two native languages? Why couldn’t I enjoy this in blissful ignorance and not have to endure some of the lamest lyrics ever written? Oh dear…
Night of the Werewolves
If We Drink Your Blood sounds like a heavy metal version of Lordi, Night of the Werewolves has an almost Iron Maiden feel to it. The album is consistently comparable to my favorites among power-infused heavy metal bands, and they add a unique operatic element to the mix. It’s just that their comedy routine is something more on par with a Meet the Spartans. Blood of the Saints is definitely good enough for me to get over that and still enjoy it. Their lyrics aren’t annoying really, because the vocals are so good. It’s just disappointing that they couldn’t cultivate their gimmick into something actually entertaining. Blood of the Saints could have been a lot better than it actually is with relatively little additional effort on the band’s part. But so what, I guess, because I’m not going to stop listening to this one for a long time.
As long as Alestorm keep doing what they do I will continue to be entertained by them. They are incredible musicians and take folk metal down a unique path. The expectations for a band of their sort are pretty demanding though. You can’t just write good music; you have to be funny, kick ass, and do it all within a narrow context–in their case pirates.
Song: Back Through Time
Three albums in, Alestorm were probably feeling the drain on original material. At first they seemed to resolve it. Back Through Time opens with a GWARish novelty. The band stumble upon a portal into the past and wage war against vikings. With lines like “you put your faith in Odin and Thor, we put ours in cannons and whores,” the door was open to develop a clever concept album.
Song: Scraping the Barrel
Unfortunately, and rather irrationally, the new novelty is dropped almost as soon as they introduce it. They got my hopes up for a rival to GWAR’s Beyond Hell, and instead went right back to the same old topics from track 2 onwards. That’s fine, but Black Sails at Midnight really raised the bar from Captain Morgan’s Revenge. “I want more wenches and mead!” was thoroughly sufficient to amuse me on their first album, where pirate metal itself was still a novelty. On Black Sails the lyrics “matured”. They weren’t just silly, they were clever, well crafted, and effective. Epic tracks like Keelhauled and Pirate Song would have amounted to nothing if they were just more mindless clamorings for loose women and alcohol.
So the second track’s chorus of “Shipwrecked! Get drunk or die!” was a definite disappointment, even if it made me giggle. The rest of the album is pretty much the same mundane thing. A few absurd lines that make you smile every time (“Slap that midget with an oar! Remove his legs with a saw!”), and a lot of mindless demands for booze. I mean, it’s not that I don’t like it. Korpiklaani have been doing pretty much the same thing now for seven albums and I still listen to them obsessively. It’s just that I expected a little bit more lyrically out of Alestorm.
At least they know it. “Many have told us that we can’t go on–That one day we’ll run out of lyrics for songs. But when the time comes to write album four, we’ll scrape at the barrel once more!” It’s just that the whole pirate vs. viking thing seemed so promising and they went nowhere with it.
Song: Death Throes of the Terrorsquid
Among the album’s high points is a pretty epic grand finale. It’s something of a conclusion to the Black Sails track Leviathan. They lost to him last time, this time they win, simple enough. The lyrics are decidedly more creative than the rest of the album. That doesn’t exactly make them poetic, but they’re at least sufficient to not make a mockery of what is a really well written song. As the pirates reach their destination and the squid emerges, black metal vocalist Ken Sorceron of Abigail Williams takes up the mic to add a whole new level of intensity that I hope we’ll hear more of on their future releases. “Epic sea battle” isn’t a theme you exactly hear much of in music, and this song is Alestorm’s best effort to date at pulling it off.
But it’s not my favorite track.
Song: The Irish Descendants – Barrett’s Privateers
The only thing I might love more than Irish folk is Irish/Canadian sea shanties. Stan Rogers might not have written Barrett’s Privateers until 1976, but it became an instant, frequently covered classic of the genre, just as authentic as anything written in the 19th century. Alestorm have established a history of cover songs. Whether covering a proper song (Flower of Scotland on Captain Morgan’s Revenge), turning a shitty pop song into something amazing (Wolves of the Sea on Black Sails at Midnight), or just trolling the hell out of us (THIS fabulous atrocity on the LTD Edition of Back Through Time), Alestorm have been consistent about including at least one cover on every album. This is the first time they’ve tackled a song that was truly excellent in its original form however, and they pulled it off to perfection.
Song: Barrett’s Privateers
The fact that Týr frontman and folk metal god Heri Joensen appears to provide a guitar solo in the middle doesn’t hurt any.
All things considered, Back Through Time is nowhere near as good as Black Sails at Midnight and ranks slightly below Captain Morgan’s Revenge, but that’s no reason to avoid it. It’s still an entertaining ride from start to finish, and one I find myself putting on repeat on a regular basis. Check it out.
Falconer is a band I’ve been encouraged to listen to for close to a decade now, and a few song samples aside I did a fine job of ignoring them. The term “power metal”, for all the fabulous bands associated with it, is something of a caution sign. I see it and brace myself for either high-pitched whiny singing or operatic vocals excessive to the point of being cheesy, coupled with completely generic, repetitive riffs that without fail give way after the second chorus into the guitar solo equivalent of a mid-life crisis mobile.
Song: Svarta Änkan
Thankfully, Armod is not that kind of power metal album. You might think it is briefly on the first track, but there are early signs of deviation. Within 45 seconds Mathias Blad softly explodes onto the stage with a vocal performance reminiscent of Vintersorg’s work with Otyg. Not too much later (around 1:20) the guitarist changes course, mimicking the vocals with deep and pronounced tones that likewise resemble Otyg. Sure, the structure of the song follows a power metal standard, complete with a slightly overdone guitar solo that you hear coming a mile off, but Mathias’s singing, his choice of Swedish over English, and that folk metal style guitar that accompanies him and takes the spotlight around 5:15 all point to something more.
Song: Herr Peder Och Hans Syster
That something fully manifests in the second track, Dimmornas Drottning, but I’m going to go ahead and post Herr Peder Och Hans Systerinstead, it being my favorite on the album. It lacks the violin that distinguishes Dimmornas Drottning (another feature reminiscent of Otyg), but the vocals and guitar pair up just perfectly from start to finish. And with the exception of a mild reminder in the chorus, you would never know the band had heard of power metal let alone performed it for ten years. It’s about as folk metal as you can get with nothing but guitars, drums and vocals.
Song: Griftefrid
What’s really great about Armod though is that it’s not a folk metal album either. It will go down as folk/power metal, and rightly so I suppose, but what I’m really hearing is a conscious melding of styles. When I say some of the songs remind me of Otyg, it goes beyond a mere coincidental resemblance. I think their music was actively influential on the creation of this album. Likewise, Griftefrid offers up the power of black metal-influenced symphonic acts like Equilibrium because, I think, Falconer actively listens to music of that sort and made a conscious effort to integrate it into their own sound.
Song: Eklundapolskan
The end result is one of the most stylistically diverse albums I’ve heard all year, and it is diverse in the best possible way. This is the sort of album you could have never experienced in the dark ages of the 90s, when people still had to hunt down new music in person and pay hard cash for every release. I could be wrong, but I think Falconer really did their research on this one.
The album’s only down side is a set of “bonus” tracks at the end, comprised of songs from the album proper remixed with English vocals. Skip them, I beseech you. The Swedish vocals are the centerpoint of this album, around which all of the various metal trends Falconer incorporate coalesce.
I know how to smell a scam, and this thing reeks. But I couldn’t write it off so easily, because I found it through a band’s official tour schedule. So I started looking around at a bunch of different band sites, a bunch of reputable music magazines, everything I could think of, and sure enough, it appears to be legit. If it is a scam, it’s about the most well played one I’ve ever encountered. I honestly think this is real.
So you probably figure, ok, cruises are for yuppies and old people, it’s probably going to be a lot of cheesy hair metal, washed up gimmicks, and no name bands. It certainly isn’t going to be the most impressive names in metal, all playing at least two sets a piece, chilling on the deck getting hammered with the fans between performances, right? …Right?…
Blind Guardian, Týr, Finntroll, Ensiferum, Korpiklaani, Amon Amarth, and Iced Earth top the lineup. I’m not fucking kidding. This cruise includes Nevermore, Marduk, Sonata Arctica, Moonspell, Rage, Epica, Dark Tranquility, Testament, Obituary, Exodus, Fear Factory, Gamma Ray, Unleashed, and a Bathory cover band consisting of members of Mayhem, Einherjer, Dimmu Borgir, Thyrfing, and Primordial.
On a cruise ship.
I think I just crapped my pants.
According to the creator of all this, “I live in Vancouver, BC, very close to the cruise ship terminal. So one day about three years ago I was sitting with my friends on my balcony having a few beers. Obviously we had one too many, because I remember asking those guys, hey, wouldn’t that be cool to charter one of these and put a heavy metal festival on? That was when 70000TONS OF METAL was born.”
This pick for song of the day marks the fifth time the “Bards” from Germany has made an appearance. This song marks the third track to be chosen from their latest album, At The Edge of Time. To say that I am a fan of Blind Guardian would be just a tad bit of an understatement.
“Valkyries” is the latest song of the day and it’s Blind Guardian at their most progressive metal. As a band they’ve grown from a German speed and thrash metal band then became one of the progenitors of the power metal subgenre. For the past dozen or so years they’ve evolved their sound to incorporate progressive, melodic, symphonic and orchestral stylings to their basic power metal sound.
This song has lead bard Hansi Kürsch writing about Norse mythology, specifically the concept of the Valkyries who fly and roam above the battlefield to take those worthy slain warriors to Valhalla. Kürsch has been one of the best songwriters in the metal scene that I’ve had the pleasure to listen to. His songs are musical epic poems and if one has been following the previous “song of the day” entries involving this band they would’ve seen just how complex and intricate the lyrics Kürsch as come up with for each and every song. “Valkyries” lyrics are no different and listening to him sing it in his distinct voice conjures up images of glorious battlefields and brave warriors clashing in battle.
Listening to this song definitely would make for a great way to pump one up for the possibility of going into battle with battleaxe and sword in hand.
Valkyries
To the gods of the north, I pray And raise my cup for the fallen ones Then I cry In Valhalla they’ll sing
Rain Red blood keeps pouring down Come Valkyries, join me on that final ride
Here I lie bleeding Odin, I await thee
The battle rages on
New lines they’re weaving The future, the past and the present They’re one They will reveal their mask To show me a way to survive This bitter war
Soon it will be over He will be the one We’ll weave in
And terror will now rule these lands
When the battle is lost And the slain ones are chosen Valkyries will guide us home When the battle is lost And the slain ones are chosen Valkyries will guide us home
Destiny A spinning wheel The path of glory Round and round Come join us On your final ride to Asgard Let’s move on fast Allfather waits So let’s heed the final call
For now We leave this world behind It’s over
All glory to the brave Still blood will rain Through storm and fire Let war winds reign It’s the feast for the crows
Follow the light Just follow the light Or fade away
Soon it will be over He will be the one We’ll weave in and terror will now rule these lands
When the battle is lost And the slain ones are chosen Valkyries will guide us home When the battle is lost And the slain ones are chosen Valkyries will guide us home
We’ll keep on weaving We’re crushing through lines With our battering swords We’re marching on Assign the brave To survive This bitter war
Soon it will be over He will be the one We’ll weave in
And terror will now rule these lands
When the battle is lost And the slain ones are chosen Valkyries will guide us home When the battle is lost And the slain ones are chosen Valkyries will guide us home We’ll heed the final call A call to arms The valkyries will guide us home
Then finally I hear them say Carry on For Valhalla awaits you
Through the Shattered Lens 