Ensiferum - Two Paths

Autopilot Engaged

Man this is a frustrating one.  I've covered every Ensiferum album up to this point, I'm obviously a huge fan, but it's just becoming clearer and clearer that they are just woefully inconsistent.  We all know how legendary the first two albums are (even though the debut is truly split in half between good and bad songs, but the good songs are so good that it barely matters), and ever since Jari Maenpaa left to "focus" on Wintersun full time and Petri Lindroos stepped in to fill the vocalist/guitarist spot, they've been sort of all over the place.  Victory Songs is phenomenal and still to this day my favorite album of theirs, From Afar and One Man Army are both kinda wonky and unfocused at times but overall have enough great moments to make them worthwhile, and Unsung Heroes is lame as shit.  There's really no clear trajectory to their career nowadays, and admittedly they do at least try something new with each album so I can't fault them too much for not always hitting bullseye. 

So along comes 2017 and with it comes their seventh album, Two Paths, and the new idea this time is "let's let members who can't sing handle the vocals this time."  We all know that ever since Jari left, the harsh vocals have been covered by Petri and the cleans are mostly Markus Toivonen, with Sami Hinkka allegedly contributing as well but admittedly it's always just sounded like the same deep voiced dude layering over himself so I never noticed.  But here?  Nah man apparently everybody gets a turn!  Sometimes it works out fine, Netta Skog handles lead vocals on "Feast with Valkyries" and she does a good job, and a couple tracks keep the old dichotomy up and running without any changes.  But then there are songs like "God is Dead", "Don't You Say", and the title track, which for some godforsaken reason I'll never understand allow... I dunno somebody who isn't Markus to do clean vocals, and man these other dudes suuuuuuuck.  There's really no way to describe these vocals other than "somebody who can't sing", because that's all it really is.  I wish there was a better way to describe it but there really isn't.  It's just somebody who isn't a good singer, who struggles to carry a tune, can't really emote, and clearly doesn't have much experience doing this sort of thing. 

I should harp on the bad vocals more, but that's really all there is to say about them.  They're just "bad" and that's the only way that I, somebody well versed in trashing bad music, can say about them.  I've always been more of a music guy than a vocals guy anyway, so I suppose the most important part of the album is simply whether or not the songs are any good, and that answer is a bit more complicated.  In a way, kinda.  Tracks like "For Those About to Fight for Metal", "Way of the Warrior", and especially "King of Storms" are absolute scorchers.  Those three tracks exemplify everything that makes Ensiferum so great, and they showcase an absolute mastery of this battle metal subsect of folk metal.  Folk melodies interspersed with gigantically bombastic power metal is such a fucking cool thing and Ensiferum are basically the Grand Poobah of the style, and on these tracks they solidify their stranglehold on the dying scene.  "King of Storms" in particular stands out for being a sort of hybrid between "Slayer of Light" and "Axe of Judgment" with how intense and thrashy it is.  I've always loved it when the band would churn out mega aggressive songs like that.

The rest of the songs range from "really dull" to "really stupid".  "Feast with Valkyries", "Hail to the Victor" and "I Will Never Kneel" just sullenly plod on by with nothing exciting happening, keeping up the age old problem of Ensiferum's fast songs being awesome and their slow songs being tame.  Then there are the ones with the bad clean vocals, and even beyond the baffling choice to fill them with terrible voices, they also stand out for being musical departures from their usual fare.  More specifically, they sound like different bands entirely.  "Don't You Say" is a really simple, almost vaguely punky rock song with brain-dead simple chord progressions and lazy melodies, and "God is Dead" sounds like there was a mixup in the studio and Alestorm or Korpiklaani accidentally stepped in to record a song.  Really, "God is Dead" is the exact kind of folk metal that Ensiferum always managed to avoid; the sort of doinky accordion jig that feels like a joke more than anything else.  It's almost offensive in how fucking stupid it is.  And yet I... kinda love it?  I wish I didn't, because it is dumb as shit.  It sounds like they were aiming for recreating "One More Magic Potion" and instead landed somewhere near "Wooden Pints", but the chorus is so brazenly rousing and the solo is surprising shreddy, the buildup in the intro sounds like the world's most radical party is about to let loose, it all just somehow comes together masterfully, despite how dorky it is.

Despite mostly having good things to say about the album so far (awful vocals aside), this still lands as a disappointment, and it's simply because even the best songs here pale in comparison to the best songs they've done before.  I'm not intending to hold Two Paths in the shadow of Iron or something, because I know that's unfair, I just mean that despite "Way of the Warrior" being a good song, it's still on the whole pretty average for the style.  Ensiferum likes to throw new ideas around all the time, and somehow they're still on autopilot.  There is very little fundamental difference between the more traditional songs here and the stuff they used to do in the early 2000s when they were on top of the world, but what was once invigorating and exhilarating is now rote and played out.  These songs sound like they wrote themselves, and that's not a compliment.

I find myself at something of a loss for words when it comes to this album, because most of my criticisms can just be accurately summed up by gesturing towards the speakers and saying "you see what I mean?"  Two Paths isn't necessarily a bad album, but it is an unnecessary one on the whole.  There are three classic sounding Ensiferum tracks and one surprisingly good Alestorm track and the rest is just totally forgettable.  The band is so frustrating at this juncture because I don't really know what I want them to do in order to make them as good as they were on the first three albums again.  Just... I dunno, be great again.  The reason "King of Storms" sounds so great is because it sounds hungry and driven, whereas "I Will Never Kneel" sounds obligatory.  If they can get back to writing full albums' worth of "King of Storms"-level excellent tracks, they'll find themselves back at their rightful place at the top, but as of right now, they're has-beens.  And it's a real damn shame because almost nobody could touch them in their prime.


RATING: 53%

Tengger Cavalry - kAAn

The Army of God experiences a crisis of faith

I've been hyping the shit out of Tengger Cavalry since 2013.  It seemed like everything Nature Zhang (as he was known at the time) touched turned to gold, and things only improved after Cavalry Folk when he expanded the band into a full lineup instead of a one-man band.  Up through Ancient Call, I was hooked.  Whether he be focusing on soothing, ritualistic tracks, rife with traditional Mongolian instrumentation and throat singing, or riffing your face off with simple yet effective melodeath/folk metal corkers, he was on fire, I wanted more and he/they consistently delivered.

Then Nature moved to New York and restocked the band with all new members, and suddenly things changed.

Their output after solidifying the new lineup exploded.  Since the move, they've released a mindboggling twenty five releases in barely three years, mostly consisting of singles, live albums, and rerecordings of previous full lengths.  We haven't had a "true" new Tengger album since Ancient Call, and if I'm being totally honest, I haven't bothered listening to most of these new releases.  I mean, I've already heard Blood Sacrifice Shaman, why do I want to hear it again five years later?  I can just listen to the original.  Sure I'll check out Mountain Side, but only for the title track, since the release is otherwise full of remixes and rerecordings.  So with that in mind, I ignored everything until this new EP, kAAn, since it's the first thing in a long time to consist album entirely of new material.  And upon first listen, something seemed... different.  Something about the Tengger I love was missing, and I couldn't initially place my finger on it, so I finally went back and listened to all those rerecordings I've been ignoring for years.  Then it hit me.

They're whitewashing everything to all but eliminate the harsh vocals.

I don't know if Nature blew his voice out and needs to exclusively utilize the throat singing that lent so much character to the band early on, or if it's a conscious choice to focus more intently on the cultural heritage of the band and eschew the more "normal" metal elements, but either way a lot of power is missing from the band now.  This worked on some things, the reworked version of Blood Sacrifice Shaman is excellent, if wholly different from its original incarnation, and Hymn of the Earth (the new Ancient Call) sounds pretty good if a little disappointing on some of the heavier and more aggressive tracks now missing that vicious snarl.  But around the time of Cavalry in Thousands (a rerecorded version of The Expedition, which was already a rerelease with a few changes of Black Steed from a few months prior), even the production seemed to fall off and just sound less massive and powerful.  This all ties in because it telegraphs kAAn very well, as it's a decent enough EP that retains the band's spirit quite well, but a lot of the tertiary elements that helped make the good band a great one are missing.  The production feels kinda flat, it's missing that propulsive oomph that helped kick the previous albums into overdrive when the songs called for it.  That's a shame because there are some awesomely aggressive numbers on here, like "Accused" and "Struggle" that feel like they're missing that extra gear they're trying to reach.

Musically there isn't exactly a whole lot to complain about, it's the same style of pummeling fury entwined with the cultural quirks and twangs of that god damned beautiful horsey fiddle I'll never fall out of love with, but the fact that each song falls short of three minutes and end on fadeouts, it just sounds underdeveloped.  Like they have great ideas and wicked riffs to present, as kAAn is chock full of them, but the songs were never exactly finished and just kinda fizzle out in the middle of a cool section.  This is, ultimately, what the band's main achilles heel at this point in their career, as they're fully embracing the digital age and pumping out singles and EPs at an almost alarming rate.  The catch is that very few things sound finished.  They've recently been releasing covers of classic songs that all run for about half of their original runtimes (the Metallica one (Master of Puppets) has a cool reworking of the chorus but otherwise sounds pretty ehhh, though the Motorhead and Megadeth ones are great), and that's true on kAAn as well.  It sounds like everything should be doubled in length, like there's a lot more song to get to before it just fades out and starts the next one.  They're recording and releasing every idea that falls out of Nature's head, regardless of whether or not it's fully fleshed out, and that's disappointing coming from a band that released like five classics in a row in the first half of the decade. 

The good parts are still here, the riffs are mostly a satisfying gallop and the folk instruments and throat singing add a ton of flavor to the otherwise simplistic riffs to great effect, but with the production polished so tightly and the explosive growls completely excised, it sounds like half a band releasing half an EP full of songs only halfway finished.  What I want most out of the Tengger camp is for them to simply slow down.  They're delivering an astounding quantity of music but the quality has dipped sharply.  As inherently simple as the backbone of the music has always been, it's just not working the same way it used to, and I feel like it's mostly because they're just doing too much too quickly, releasing first drafts of every new song and reworking old ones with new ideas and just nothing sounds finished.  kAAn has a lot of potential, with some songs being ridiculously cool (most specifically "Accused", "Mind Raid", and "Struggle") but just failing to follow through with their ideas.  I hate to be so harsh on Tengger because I was such a huge fan previously, but that's exactly why I'm so disappointed.  I know they can do better, and really all I want is for them to chill out and release some fully fleshed out songs for a change.


RATING: 55%

Tengger Cavalry - The Expedition

I didn't make a Dynasty Warriors reference

Remember when I gushed for days over Ancient Call?  Well The Expedition here is what started it all for me, and if you want to just skip all this shit and read my review for the followup album instead, not much will be different.

Tengger actually shares a bizarrely specific trait with Nile of all bands, and that's that both bands took the metal and non-metal influences of their music and blended them masterfully into a truly unique beast that nobody could possibly imitate.  Then, they both separated those two influences (Tengger with the Cavalry Folk double album, and Nile with the Karl Sanders solo album, Saurian Meditations) by almost completely excising the metal elements of their music and focusing on the folk portion.  The difference here is that when Nile came back with Annihilation of the Wicked, while it's pretty easily my favorite album of theirs, the Egyptian folk flavoring and ambient/booming passages are almost completely gone, or at least separated cleanly between tracks and albums, whereas Tengger Cavalry managed to return with Black Steed, which took both sides of their Cavalry Folk double feature and just blended them together better than ever before.  I think that by focusing on their metal side and their folk side separately, they (or rather Nature Zhang/Ganganbaigal, since the band is basically him plus whatever hired goons he employs) learned exactly what makes each side work, and learned how to take the best elements of each and twist them into a fucking gorgeous helix of twangy headbanging fury. 

Now, there is something of a problem with The Expedition, and that's that it is note for note almost completely identical to Black Steed.  Like six tracks are literally identical, not rerecorded or anything, and the tracklisting is just slightly modified and a couple interludes and acoustic tracks are different, otherwise it's essentially the same album.  This would bother most people, and admittedly it should probably irritate the hell out of me, but I heard The Expedition first, so it turns out to not matter to me at all (though the band would seem to follow this pattern and rerecord Blood Sacrifice Shaman two years later).  So consider this a review for both albums, if you will. 

I was hooked on the opening track, in the opening seconds.  Less than thirty seconds into the album and you're blasted in the face with everything the album plans on throwing at you.  There's an extended explosion of distortion, overlaid with haunting Mongolian throat singing and that fucking beautiful horsey fiddle I never shut up about.  After about twenty seconds of setting the stage with a punishing and slow overture, the fiddles give out a cry clearly meant to imitate a horse's whinny, and then shit just fucking explodes.  I don't know if you've ever heard the most perfect riff in history before, but it's right at this point where it decides to show up.  It's pretty clear that there are two things about metal that I love more than anything in the world, and that's simplicity and bombast.  The two don't always go together outside of something like Amon Amarth, and their songwriting skills are generally mediocre so there are only a handful of tracks here and there that really encapsulate the splendor I enjoy so much.  Otherwise you'll get awesome simple bands like Jungle Rot who can just pummel you to death forever with the stupidest riffs imaginable, or awesome bombastic bands like Rhapsody who just throw caution to the wind and throw in a million layers of choirs and horns and whatever they can think of to make the most epic shit imaginable.  Tengger Cavalry learned here how to perfectly mix both of these qualities, because that main riff to "Cavalry in Thousands" is just the most beautiful god damned thing I've ever heard.  It's a midpaced, heavy fucking metal riff that just mashes your faces with gauntleted smacks, forcing you to just slam your head against the nearest surface until you concuss yourself into gibbering idiocy.  Then the bridge comes, and it slows down a bit with a really simple straight eight note chugging riff and a soothing horsey fiddle melody, before it just suddenly breaks.  It's a simple Metallica styled "chug chug pulloff chug pulloff" riff that you've probably heard hundreds of times, but the interspersed hammering of the drums just signify that shit is about to break loose, and after a repeat or two, the drummer lets out a slick fill and then FUUUUUUUUUCK.  This god damned solo is so stupid.  It's just really fast picking and changing your fretting hand's position every bar or so with a random high note and a quick descending run part, and it climaxes on a harmonized melody that would make Iron Maiden weep, and all throughout the world horses just lose their minds and trample the fuck out of gophers.  I love every second of this solo and by extension this song and by extension this album if I'm being honest with you.

Almost every song follows that basic pattern, nothing really goes above mid paced other than sections of "Expedition" and "Hymn of the Wolf", and the fiddles never really shut up, but it's a good thing here because they add such a distinct flavor to the riffs and melodies throughout the album.  Between the fiddles and the throat singing, Tengger is determined to never let you forget where their inspiration comes from, that being the green steppes of Mongolia.  Every god damned second of The Expedition sounds like the soundtrack to a war across the grasslands, from the tense nights in camp, unsure of when the next assault with take place, to the victorious raids on the unsuspecting enemies while they sleep in their villages.  The band hasn't really done a whole lot in the way of changing what they do since Cavalry Folk split things into two camps and identifies the strengths of each, but I can't think of any way I'd ask them to change.  Everything here sounds massive, it's the backdrop to a bloody war on horseback.  That's really how it should be, it's simplistic metal riffs with I guess a sort of melodeath flavor thanks almost entirely to the vocals, while the guitar just stomps and gallops its way to freedom with a backdrop of booming mysticism.  It's not for everybody, about half of the fellow metal fans I've showed this band to have said it was just simple and dumb and lame and had nothing going on in it besides irritating folk melodies and nothing-riffs, but there are the chosen few who just got swept up in the majesty the music presents.  You should be one of those two, if you pick out "huh, this riff is okay I guess but it's not all that advanced or adventurous", you'll find yourself staring at Stonehenge and saying "Well I mean there's nothing special about this stone, it's just a stone".  It's all about the big picture, it's about the soaring greatness that the riffs and melodies pull together.  If there's anything at all wrong with the album, it's that the vocals are really pretty standard, which wouldn't be a problem normally, but when stacked up against the creativity that permeates every other second of the album it kinda stands out, and that the album is structured weirdly, with the last four tracks being a midpaced metal instrumental, a clear majestic outro with distorted guitars shoehorned in, and then two acoustic folk songs.  So really there's only like five traditional metal "songs" to be found here out of ten tracks, which doesn't bother me really, but I can see how it could be a negative to others. 

Overall just shut up and listen to Tengger Cavalry already.  Basically every album is amazing, but they really hit their stride starting with the Cavalry Folk double album, and The Expedition here is smack dab in the middle of that hot streak, even if it is for all intents and purposes just Black Steed with different outro tracks.  Who cares, listen to this, it's amazing.


RATING - 93%

Niburta - ReSet

L-L-L-L-LADIES AND DJENTLEMEN

This... truly is a piece of work.  To really understand what this is, I need to give you a brief history lesson about Niburta.  They were a folk metal band.  That's it, lesson over, be sure to turn in your essays by the end of the week.  Really, they just took the Eluveitie route of blending folk metal with melodeath and calling it a day, with their only distinguishing feature being that the folk twanging they chose was Balkanic instead of Celtic.  Otherwise they were a complete clone band replete with In Flames reject riffs and melodies with random female vocals and fiddles and whatever twangboxes they have in Bulgaria.  They had one song that was maddeningly catchy ("Balkanic Heart") and were otherwise completely forgettable and not worth listening to.

The band realized this, and so they decided that they needed to do something to stand out.  Something to... say, reset their career on a clean slate so the endless comparisons would stop.  How could they do this?  How could they possibly rejuvenate a style like folk metal, whose moon has been on the wane ever since Korpiklaani became popular and made extremely clear how shallow and dumb 90% of the bands in the style were?  There had to be some fresh new idea that nobody had thought of yet.  Well in early 2015, Niburta figured it out, they decided to blend their lukewarm brand of played out folk metal with djentcore.

Here's what they forgot: djent cannot save folk metal.  Then again, djent couldn't save a game of Final Fantasy if the entire game took place within a save point and the only command in battle was "save" and it was called Final Fantasy: Save Point.

That opening preamble that consisted of calling the band shitty for trying a stupid idea and predictably failing at it is really all the musical description I need, you've got the gist of what this sounds like.  Three songs, thirteenish minutes, one stupid experiment.  The title track, "ReSet" stands out a slight bit for having an extended quiet folk section in the middle, but it's not a good reason to stand out, because Niburta was never particularly good at folking, and their metalling was always even worse.  Trying to modernize a once trendy style with another flashy trend (though admittedly it looks like djent might be here to stay, even if its popularity is dwindling slowly) is a dubious agenda to start with, but it's made apparent within the first few seconds of gentle cooing clashing harshly with the classic Meshuggah tone of robotic scooped mids, which also clashes against the soft and yet somehow still frantic fiddling that this is dead on arrival.  No individual performances stand out, it's djust a djumbled mess of white noise that goes nowhere.

I'm being a tinge unfair, because it's not djust djent they added, as they also moved away from the light melodeath and decided to try going a more metalcore route with their riffing.  Since that's essentially djust still light metalcore, the new tone and focus on rhythmic chugging makes ReSet sound less like "In Flames with fiddles" and more "Veil of Maya with no breakdowns, shittier vocals, and fiddles".  That's the long and (mercifully) short of it.  It doesn't seem like the band has gained any new traction with this new direction, so hopefully they can djust lay down and fade away painlessly instead of further assaulting good taste djaunty bullshit.


RATING - 15%

Ensiferum - One Man Army

PISTOLEEEEROOOO!

Ensiferum's career trajectory could be described as "wonky" or "inconsistent", but that's odd if you consider the fact that the personal ratings I've given every album increase until Victory Songs reaches the pinnacle and the following two albums score consecutively lower.  I mean, that seems pretty clear cut to me, no?  They started off inconsistent with a penchant for boring filler dullards, got more and more epic, focused, and energetic, and then got slightly experimental before just giving up and making a full album of those boring filler tracks from the debut.  It doesn't matter that my heart tells a different story about how they had numerous peaks and valleys and have experimented with a lot of ideas (not all of which hit bullseye) since day one; they went up and then went down.  Case closed.

In charges One Man Army, which opens with one of the best intro/full song combos they've had since "Ad Victoriam/Blood is the Price of Glory" in "March of War/Axe of Judgment".  I'm not kidding when I say that I was utterly floored by the intensity on display during the opening number.  The band hasn't sounded this hungry since 2007, and man is that a welcome change from the bland trot of Unsung Heroes.  This has been earning some comparisons to the debut album, and at least on "Axe of Judgment", it's absolutely fitting.  The insanely fast tremolo riffing with the soft, heroic choirs over the top, interspersed with jaunty jangling melodies and clear singalong moments can only bring to mind classics like "Windrider" or "Hero in a Dream".  Then the bridge devolves into an uncharacteristically heaving chugging riff, with banging toms and clear fist pumping "HEY!" moments before another crowd rousing gallop and soaring harmonized guitar solo.  This is just not the kind of thing you were ever gonna hear on the last album, and it was the absolute perfect song to open this album with.  It makes a definitive statement right out of the gate that they heard the complaints about Unsung Heroes, and they aimed to correct it.

There's.... well there's a slight problem with that.  It does assuage the sting of the last disappointment by loading this album down with more aggressive, epic, and most importantly, focused songs, but it sort of did exactly what I didn't like about the debut.  Yeah, it's back to being pretty much half fast songs and half slow songs.  Now, this isn't all bad, because some of the slower/mid paced tracks are pretty good, "Heathen Horde" brings to mind the fabulous "Wanderer" and "Warrior Without a War" conveys some great atmosphere, but fuck just drop the Heathen Throne saga already.  It doesn't work, it took up the only boring segments of From Afar and managed to be an agonizingly long 17 minute track on Unsung Heroes.  I don't think I can chalk it up to coincidence anymore that every single track labeled with that subtitle ends up being a pointless listen.  Across the six tracks that's comprised it so far (I don't care what anybody says, "Tumman Virran Taa" is part of it), we're at a staggering 55 minutes of cruddy music from the band.  Just... why?  So yes, as I'm sure you could guess, "My Ancestor's Blood" and "Descendants, Defiance, Domination" aren't particularly good.  They're actually fairly inoffensive when taken at face value (and to be fair, "My Ancestor's Blood" has potential to be one of their good mid paced tracks, but it just falls flat and ends up doing nothing worthwhile), just being boring songs that trot along at mid pace with bland melodies that don't elicit any particularly strong emotions.  But for some reason they irritate me probably more than they should.  Maybe it's just because fuck Heathen Throne stop it seriously.

Okay, so that's like sixteen minutes of the album that I definitively would rather not listen to, does the rest fare better?  Yes of course.  Like I said, this brings to mind the first album, so the dichotomy between songs is really clear and the gap is pretty wide, with "Cry for the Earth Bounds" being a sort of okay but kinda lame mid paced drowse-fest, but the title track and "Two of Spades" just completely slay.  I was pretty vocal early on about how the title track was lame, but within the context of the full album it actually works marvelously.  It's a quick, high octane barnburner with a massive pre-chorus.  The actual chorus lets the buildup down slightly but the massive choirs end up being the part that sticks in your head so it's not so bad. 

"Two of Spades" has been getting a lot of hype during the album's promotional run, and let me tell you, it's completely deserved.  I'm not kidding when I say this may have finally usurped "Battle Song", "Guardians of Fate", or "Victory Song" as my favorite Ensiferum track.  It opens first with a very adrenaline pumping intro reminiscent of "Twilight Tavern", and from there it just picks up speed and the melodies only get stronger.  This is what they're best at, they can intertwine this strong metallic intensity of trad and power metal and throw these unabashedly dorky folk melodies over it and make it completely fucking work.  It all feels like it was born this way, like the two main elements of their sound were borne from the same embryo.  They developed together before being brought into this world together, and it shows.  Now apart from having one of the best choruses the band has ever had, there is one other aspect of this song that's been getting press, and let me tell you how utterly fucknuts wrong people are about it.  I've read a lot of press reviews long before release say that it utilizes "western" folk elements and constantly compare it to "Stone Cold Metal" from two albums ago.  Okay, so it's not something they haven't done before, right?  They already had the banjos, tin whistles, and saloon piano breakdown in that song, they can't really surprise me.  Yeah that's where everybody drops the ball like Jackie Smith.  The band does indeed break down into something they haven't done before, but that thing is a Dschinghis Khan song.  I'm not even kidding, this is straight up dorky late 70s disco music, complete with the "HOO!  HAH!" shouts leading into the verse section.  It's perfect, I can't imagine anything else this stupid being this incredible.  I can only imagine the band, with their signature look of wearing nothing but Finnish flags lining up in a choreographed dance sequence with gigantic grins on their face, punching the air in rhythm and kicking their feet out with glee before Markus takes a step forward and says his one line while the backing dancers yell out their response immediately afterwards.  I'll never get over it, something this dumb should be shunned for the forced randomness but it's just too perfect.  The entire album, to me, hinges on how fucking great the metal parts and how unexpectedly fun the silly parts of "Two of Spades" are.

So yeah, the opening rant was basically just to illustrate that Ensiferum managed to overcome their worrying slide into worthless crap, and while they've emulated their least-good classic album with the self titled debut, the same thing holds true here as it did there; the good songs are so fucking good that the boring shit of the bad songs really doesn't stick with you too much.  "Axe of Judgment" and "Two of Spades" are two of the best songs they've written in eight years, and there are a couple other great tracks scattered throughout.  The only real issue is the inconsistency that plagued their earliest work.  Markus and Jari have shown that they have the exact same problem with songwriting, since they've both been struggling with slow, epic songs and completely nailing fast and melodic ones ever since they parted ways.  So with that in mind, the album starts with a four track streak of fun, goes on a slight dip, picks up again with the flawless "Two of Spades" and frankly only half-good "My Ancestor's Blood" before being skippable at the end.  This isn't the godsend that we were all hoping for after Unsung Heroes, but it's a good pick-me-up and shows that the band does indeed care about pleasing the fans a bit.  They still have some fire left in them, and now lets just hope they can focus it for the next album.


RATING - 79%

Tengger Cavalry - Ancient Call

They call me Guan Yinping, The Shit Wrecker

So China is pretty underrepresented in the grand scheme of things when it comes to the wonderful world of heavy metal.  I'm not even kidding when I say that the only two bands I can think of right now are The Nine Treasures and the subject of today's rambling, Tengger Cavalry.  Lord knows why, but I do know that traditional Chinese music is god damned gorgeous and I could listen to those silly horsey fiddles all day and never get tired of them.  And while I'm in the region, you know what else is awesome?  Mongolian throat singing.  You know that thing where you open your throat wide enough to choke on a coffee can and then moan like a mixture of Popeye and one of those guitars you'd make in grade school out of a tissue box, cardboard tube, and rubber band?  Yeah, that shit sounds awesomely ethereal.

Boy oh boy do I wish that these three things were all somehow related!

Okay, that's the most hamfisted intro I've ever fisted, but I've got not other way to lead into the thesis of this review; that being that Tengger Cavalry is probably the freshest and most interesting band out there right now.  And really and truly, all they're doing is just writing songs for the Dynasty Warriors games.  Really, longtime readers of mine have probably noticed that I've namedropped the DW4 soundtrack more than a few times, and that's because it's full of legitimately great heavy metal and hard rock songs with smatterings of traditional Chinese instrumentation over them, and it becomes instantly memorable with those twangy, flittery melodies permeating through your skull.  Tengger Cavalry does that exact same thing, except they push every limit while doing it.  All the songs are faster, heavier, catchier, or more endlessly hummable.  Nature Zhang is kind of an oddball character (follow the band on Facebook and you'll see as many pictures of him dressing up in traditional Mongolian garb, hanging out with sheep, and talking about My Little Pony as you will actual updates regarding the band), but he filters his mad genius through the lens of simplistic extreme metal adorned with the cultural acoustic instruments that are clearly so important to him.

Folk metal in general tends to either put the folk elements at the forefront and just back it with distorted guitars (like Korpiklaani or Finntroll), or just be regular metal with some folky keyboard patch accentuating some melody (like Northland or certain Ensiferum songs), and if Tengger Cavalry here leaned to either side, it's definitely the former, but don't be alarmed, there's clearly a shitload more thought put into "Battle Song from Far Away" than "Trollhammaren".  The strength in Tengger's songs is most definitely the interplay between the guitars and the folk instruments (mainly the dombra and the horse head fiddle).  At any given time, all three of these instruments will be playing, and they will all be playing off each other brilliantly.  Nothing is used as a gimmick, there's a huge amount of restraint when it comes to flaunting the folky side of the band.  The throat singing and the acoustic twanging you'll hear over the deep chugs and double bass all work together as one cohesive beast in a way that still stuns me to this day.

One thing about Ancient Call that kind of put me off was the fact that it really didn't grab me on first listen like The Expedition did last year.  My first run through this ended with me saying "Well that was more of the same.  I guess 'Hymn of the Earth' had a really cool melody but the rest of it didn't do much for me".  Then a month later it became "Well 'Brave' was really high octane and energetic, and 'Summon the Warrior' was just crushing and epic as fuck, so they've got a couple song stretch in the middle that's really good but the rest of it is disappointing".  Which later became "Okay dammit just this whole thing rules".  I hate it when people try to sell an album as it being a grower.  No, damn you, I shouldn't have to listen to something I don't like several times before I like it, that's just like winning a battle via sheer attrition, but Tengger pulled it off somehow with Ancient Call.  Remember how I mentioned that Powerwolf kept making the same album over and over again and I was cool with it because I really liked their sound before I finally got sick of it on Preachers of the Night?  Tengger Cavalry is basically still in the middle of that slack zone, because this is essentially a carbon copy of The Expedition, but I couldn't care less.  I fell absurdly in love with that album, naming it my AOTY for 2013, so of course I wanted more of it.  Nature Zhang delivered exactly that, and I couldn't be happier for that.

There's a surprising amount of variety here too, with "Galloping Towards the Great Land" and "Brave" being absolute rippers that you'd need to be physically restrained to keep from headbanging to, and "Summon the Warrior" just rides on this low, pummeling groove that sounds like the musical manifestation of a Mongol war march.  If I think about it, actually every single song utilizes a classic galloping riff in some incarnation.  It makes complete sense with the theme of mother earth and horses and whatever the hell else Nature goes on about most of the time, but there's a very earthen, animal spirit vibe going throughout everything, so the fact that the music itself tries to manifest itself as such is only natural.  The closing track, "Legend on Horseback" is also this monstrous epic, with grand sweeping atmosphere over extremely grounded riffing and lively melodies.  That really could sum up every song if you wanted to get super simplistic about it.  I'll be the first to admit that you could trade half of the songs on this album and the previous and it'd be very hard to tell which ones were moved, but it ends up not mattering much because the quality of these songs are so staggeringly high, regardless of the fact that we've already heard them before.

Basically I'm just completely in love with this fucking band.  Every single melody hits bullseye, they're all very lively and flowing across very simple (yet effective) riffing.  The simplicity is part of the reason I fell for the previous album so hard, and Ancient Call just carries that tradition flawlessly.  There's no need for showboating or flashy bombast, Tengger Cavalry instead just keeps everything where it needs to be.  If you watch Kitchen Nightmares, you'll surely see that every episode involves Gordon Ramsay saying that the restaurant's menu is too complicated, so he always shaves it down to just a handful of items, and that's what Tengger Cavalry does.  They walked into folk metal, saw all these twangy instruments and bands with twenty fiddle players and said "Guys what are you doing?  Just get a metal band and supplement it with one or two folk instruments and keep your songs focused on what's important: good songwriting".  Then they set up shop (well, Nature set up shop, this didn't become a full band until a few albums in) and just proceeded to show every single shitty band how it's done.


RATING - 94%

Whispered - Shogunate Macabre

Premature Ejapulation

Years ago, I stumbled across Whispered.  The idea of a band taking the Children of Bodom/Ensiferum hybrid style, making it heavier, and injecting the folk influences with traditional Japanese melodies/instruments just sounds like the kind of thing that was invented with the sole purpose of appealing to my insanely specific and fringe-stupid eccentricities.  Really, how does that not sound like the most awesome thing ever?  Over the top ridiculousness, crazy soloing, and pompous bombast with an Oriental flavor?  God damn I'm getting hard just typing it out, it's so beautiful.  So of course, you can imagine my disappointment when Thousand Swords wound up being completely forgettable.  I feel like this is a style that, while not impossible to fuck up, is at least close to impossible to make boring.  There are so many untapped wells of inspiration that could be unleashed within such a concept, and yet these Finns just relied on the same tired old tropes we've been hearing for over a decade at this point.

Well now, four years later, they've finally gotten around to releasing a followup, 2014's Shogunate Macabre.  And frankly, this is exactly as awesome as I had hoped Thousand Swords was going to be.

I can't stress enough how fluently melodic and simultaneously intense the album is, abusing hyperfast blasting and frenzied shamisen runs at every turn.  Tracks like "Jikiniki", "Fallen Amaterasu", and "Unrestrained" showcase this the best, being uncontrollable bursts of energy, loaded with more hooks than your dad's tackle box.  Part of me feels like they overuse the technique where the guitars ride on an extremely fast, single note tremolo while the drums blast at sextuple time underneath haunting choirs, but they pull it off so well every single time that it happens that I really just can't fault the band for doing it so often.  It's like the slow, epic bridge in every single Gamma Ray song ever or that super slick drum pattern that Melechesh uses so frequently, it's just a nice little trademark of the band as far as I'm concerned.  Add those unrelentingly pummeling moments with oodles and oodles twangy melodies and ballistically precise melodeath/power riffs and Hatebreeder-style leads, and you've got a recipe for sublimity.

One thing that this nailed over its predecessor is doubtlessly the pacing.  Thousand Swords was spaced out with a lot of very long songs with very little happening within them, and as a whole the entire album felt bloated and unnecessary.  Shogunate Macabre fixes this by compacting the songs into much more manageable lengths, almost entirely devoid of any pointless noodling (though that still does unfortunately rear it's head at times, like the completely out-of-left-field saxophone solo in "Kappa").  The more concise structure lends itself to much more memorable songs, since the hooks are more efficiently sprinkled throughout each song instead of struggling through long periods of nothing to find them.  The way the album is organized, with three fast songs, three mid paced songs, and one more fast one before the epic closer, has a lot of potential to go horribly awry with how cut-and-separate it is, but it manages to instead keep the album flowing with a natural current.  It feels like an organic adventure as opposed to a collection of tunes (which isn't inherently good or bad, mind you).  The slower songs inject some interesting bits from time to time, like the aforementioned sax solo or the frequent clean vocals in "One Man's Burden", though I can't say the songs are improved too horribly much due to their inclusion.  I won't say they're meandering or unnecessary, just that the faster songs with huge doses of melody and ridiculously catchy leads and hooks are far more fun to listen to, is all.

Granted, I realize I'm drooling over this because I meet a very specific set of requirements for this album to have this effect on me.  I'm willing to bet most metal fans don't whack off to a soundtrack of Victory Songs and They Will Return while playing Samurai Warriors and spending the free time trying to understand Kiba's ridiculous accent in order to warble along with any given Gargoyle song.  I realize I'm a strange guy who loves the sound of Japanese traditionalism and the notoriously noob-friendly territory of melodic death/power metal like Bodom, Kalmah, Skyfire, and such.  So really, your mileage my vary, but for me, in regards to my personal eccentricities, this is the kind of album I've been silently praying for for years.  Shogunate Macabre delivered on the promise that Thousand Swords skimped on, and I couldn't be happier for that.


RATING - 89%

Korpiklaani - Manala

I am so, so sorry...

This is... really embarrassing.  I've never been an opponent of folk metal (Ensiferum has been one of my favorite bands since Iron came out), but I most certainly have been exceptionally cruel towards Korpiklaani.  To me, they were the band that took every negative quality about folk metal and then amplified it to a completely preposterous level.  I like "Wooden Pints" and I think "Happy Little Boozer" is pretty catchy, but I can't think of another track of theirs I enjoy on any level besides those two.  Around the time of Tales Along this Road, I just gave up listening to them.  Clearly they were content with being absolute dorks who had nothing to offer besides shallow bar songs backed by unimaginative and boring polka beats.  Finntroll were always the most visible clowns in folk metal, but at the very least they had a level of sincerity within their music (as silly as it may be) that I could respect.  They'd at least occasionally crap out a track like "Ellytres" that sounded like there was at least more than five minutes of forethought put into it.  Korpiklaani never went that far, they were shallow, goofy, and rarely sober old men who played shitty polka that happened to have distorted guitars in it.

To be 100% honest with you, I first checked out Manala for the same reason I first checked out Winds of Plague, I figured it'd be an easy target that I could easily just make bad jokes about and frame a review around.  The difference is that Decimate the Weak was every bit as atrocious as I thought it'd be.  Manala on the other hand is... goddamn I'm going to have to revoke even more of my credibility as a metal critic but by Jove this is really good.

I brought up Finntroll earlier, and that's really who Korpiklaani is reminding me of at this point.  It took them five years more than their countrymen, but they've finally started taking this whole folk + metal idea seriously.  Yeah, the actual metallic aspects of the band have been ramped up considerably this time around.  Now that obviously doesn't make a band inherently better (we all saw what happened to Discharge), but here it really helped lend a semblance of honesty to their previously horrawful music.  I'm buying what they're selling now, and it's just so strange to be saying that.  Instead of stupid, bouncy "hum-pa hum-pa" bullshit, they're shilling out real, honest riffs and melodies and... ya know, things that take effort to do.  Even the slower songs like "Dolorous" and "Synkkä" are surprisingly well crafted and very pleasant to listen to.

I think a big part in making the band seem less like a bunch of shitty old men is the fact that they've essentially dropped the idea of singing in English entirely, now opting for their mother tongue of Finnish.  This is just a personal preference of mine, since I like the mystique of having almost no idea what bands are saying, but when a band as notoriously shallow as Korpiklaani suddenly veils their assuredly still dicktarded lyrics to a big chunk of their audience, they suddenly become a lot less difficult to take seriously.  For all I know, "Kunnia" is just Finnish slang for "DRINK WUDZKA UND FULL DOWN", but as Midwestern American ethnocentric white trash, I couldn't give less of a shit.  So yes, perhaps a big part of being able to enjoy this album hinges on you not knowing much Finnish, but clearly the band is more comfortable writing in their native language, so I support this development.

Now since that's admittedly a pretty tenuous reason to suddenly enjoy what I once detested, I feel the need to point out what I brought up earlier, the more pronounced metallic aspects of their sound.  "Kunnia", "Petoeläimen Kuola", "Uni", songs like this take the route recently traveled by Finntroll and earlier Asmegin, which is that the folk instruments are used as a means to an end, rather than the ends themselves.  The band finally realized that simply having twangy bullshit and whoozhy hurdy gurdys wasn't necessarily enough to base a song around, so now these folk elements are being used to accentuate the melody or propel the songs forward instead of just jumping right out front, sticking their tongues out and shaking their heads going WALALARGHABLARGLALALA like a fucking court jester.  Simply reining in the whole obnoxious "Look how quirky we are!" crap really did the band a ton of favors.  This is a brilliant example of a band dialing back a quality that was previously abrasive and irritating and in turn pushing forth a more basic, stripped down approach to songwriting.  It worked marvelously, and I'm amazed that they managed to sober up long enough to realize that their music was shit, and then actually solved the problem.  When they go full folk, they keep it somber and pleasant, and when they kick up the rock n' roll attitude, they keep the folk elements in a supporting role.

And this is the part where I get hypocritical again, because my two favorite tracks are "Rauta" and "Ievan Polkka", which are the two most overt throwbacks to the style I abhor so much.  I don't know guys, I just really like them.  They're both bouncy, polka influenced numbers like their previous albums, but goddamn they just work.  I should hate "Rauta" like it was a douchey kid with snakebites who just knocked up my sister, but damn I can't help but think it's adorable with how it manages to be awful and yet charming at the same time.  It seriously says the word "iske" thirty nine times in a row at one point.  Oh lord above that is stupid.  But... man it's kind of endearing.  I know just enough Finnish to know that "rauta" means "iron" and "iske" means "strike", so I'm going to assume that the song is just the Finnish equivalent of Little Bunny Foo Foo, but it's so dorky that I can't help but smile at it.  Guess that means I'm gonna turn into a Goon...

Manala is basically just a collection of stupid singalong songs like all of their previous albums, but this one stands out for the added sincerity, variety, and upped dosage of metallic attitude.  Turns out that underneath the band's skirt, they carried a pretty hefty set of balls.  The gravelly voice that's mumbled out from behind the mountain of grody dreadlocks and the bouncy folkka oompa elements are still there, so maybe I'm just a crazy person for enjoying the hell out of this despite the flaws it still pretty blatantly carries, but I just can't help it.  It's stupid and fun and it does what it sets out to do well, unlike the previous efforts that reached for the same endgame but fell flat on their faces.


RATING - 85%

PS - If you google "Manala" you'll get a lot of images of what look like little people made of bread.  I don't care what that word means in other languages, because to me it will now forever mean "Doughboy".

Ensiferum - Unsung Heroes

Hold B to stop evolution!

*hums tune to "Stone Cold Metal"*

You're all humming it now too, aren't you?  That song is a very special one within Ensiferum's catalog because it shows that they can retain their trademark hooks and over-the-top theatrics while still trying something new.  The Old West style saloon feel of that song really makes it stand out as one of their best, with the whistles and piano and twanging banjos replacing the more traditional folk instruments and symphonic ensembles that the band normally utilizes.  It showed they can branch out from their comfort zone and make awesome, folksy power metal wherever they go, no matter how they try to do it.  While some of the experiments on the previous album, From Afar, didn't really work as well as they'd hoped, the effort was clearly there, and it signified the dawn of a new era within Ensiferum's history. 

And that is precisely what makes 2012's Unsung Heroes such a bloody kick in the nards.  This is a very, very lame and uninspired regression back to the Victory Songs era, and just plain reeks of the band phoning it in.  And when I say it goes back to Victory Songs, I really mean it goes back to the ideas of one track on that album, the ballad, "Wanderer".  That is my favorite Ensiferum album and I think "Wanderer" is a great track, but one of the reasons it is so good is because it's the only track of its kind on the album.  It stands as a unique look at the loneliness that these mythic warriors embarking on epic, world spanning quests that they normally write about really go through.  It's a look on the more melancholy side of adventuring, and the music reflects the tone of the lyrics.  It works great for what it is, a more restrained ode to our heroes.  The issue with Unsung Heroes is that nearly 80% of the album follows the formulas set by "Wanderer" and the various other slow songs on the first two albums.  If y'all don't remember, those have always been my least favorite aspects of the early albums.  The plodding ballady songs that dominate nearly half of the self titled and break the flow of the otherwise stellar Iron.  With Unsung Heroes, it's nearly the only kind of song on display.

I once again feel the need to point out the intro track, as I've noticed that my enjoyment of the album as a whole seems to be directly proportional to how much I like the signature folk intro track.  All the previous ones have carried a nice melody or a sense of foreboding or urgency, whereas "Symbols" here goes in one ear and out a nostril.  The pattern continues when "In My Sword I Trust" marches in.  This seems to be the fan favorite on the album, with even the numerous vocal detractors that they album has garnered claiming this to be the most in tune with the spirit of the band's previous works.  The chorus is a nice, rousing affair, I won't lie, and the solo is very flashy and entertaining, but otherwise it's a mid paced trot through a rather uninteresting area we've visited plenty of times before.  The main riff also reminds me of "Tie Your Mother Down" by Queen, which is pretty cool I guess, anything that reminds me of Queen is a winner in my book, but that's always been a pretty good signal of quality.  If the best things remind you of something better, it's a pretty good indication that what you're listening to probably doesn't have a whole lot of interesting things to say on their own.  And with tracks like "Last Breath", "Burning Leaves", "Unsung Heroes", and the two "Celestial Bond" songs in addition to that opening song, it just cements the problem with the album.  They all recall "Lost in Despair" or "Old Man" or "Eternal Wait" or "Tears" from previous albums.  Essentially, they hearken back to the half of their old dichotomy that always bored me shitless.  I can admit that the melodious female vocals in "Celestial Bond" are very pleasant and the male counterpart in "Star Queen" matches them in terms of smoothness, but the songs themselves just drag like an anchor behind a bicycle with no tires.

Basically what this album lacks is energy.  One thing you could never take away from the band was their dedication to the pomp and bombast that permeates all of their best songs.  Ensiferum was always on top of their game when cranking out high tempo rockers with very strikingly thick symphonics and Finnish folk melodies.  Even songs that featured slower, folkier parts would build into a victorious fanfare that made the slow parts worth it, as the payoff would be nothing with out it (See "Lai Lai Hei" and "Victory Song" for prime examples).  Everything would build and explode, or it would leave the gate in a sprint and not slow down until long after it had crossed the logical finish line.  Now with Unsung Heroes, we're treated to a host of dull sightseeing tours, with the band trolling along at a slow pace, occasionally pointing at things and saying "Isn't that pretty?".  It's lame, it's not fun, it's not even interesting, the lack of conviction really makes it feel like the band didn't give much of a shit when it came to this album.  It's a series of mainly inconsequential, low tempo dullards with nothing interesting happening inside, even if Markus Toivonen is finally getting more and more opportunities to sing.

Now this album isn't without its merits, there are a couple songs I have yet to mention.  "Pohjola" is also a midpaced track, but unlike the previous treks, this one has some bounce and energy to it.  The folky overtones complement the strong guitar work and actually manage to capture some of the lost fire that this album sorely lacks.  There's also a small segment of narration, and the narrator sounds like Christopher Lee.  I know I just said that it's bad when the good things remind you of something better, but there's a charm about hearing Saruman describe epic battles over bombastic power metal that I'll adore no matter who he's rambling over.  The 17 minute epic track, "Passion Proof Power" is also surprisingly well done after an album full of lifeless slumps, as it manages to build itself up to a fun climax on more than one occasion.  Essentially every idea the album toys with is fully realized within this closing epic, and if the energy and dedication that the band put into this track had been prominent throughout the previous 45 minutes, you'd be looking at a much more generous score at the bottom of the page here, even if it does end roughly five minutes after it should.  And then there's "Retribution Shall Be Mine", which is this album's answer to "Slayer of Light", "The New Dawn", and "Elusive Reaches".  It retains the bludgeoning aggression of those previous tracks, but fleshes it out amongst a much longer span of time and keeps the folk elements higher and the guitar with some much freer noodling.  The guitar soloing is actually a bit of an anomaly within Unsung Heroes actually, as it really stands out as a greater cog in the gears that make the album tick.  It was never a huge, prominent feature with Ensiferum previously, but it is here, and it's a nice touch that keeps the album listenable during the dull songs that take up so much of the time.

Essentially, there are only three tracks out of nine proper that contain anything enjoyable, and they're all in the latter half of the album.  It takes nearly 23 minutes before the first worthwhile track rears its head.  And the best track is honestly the bonus track, "Bamboleo".  It's a Gypsy Kings cover, whom I've never heard of, nor have I ever heard the original version of this song, but if I gave any less of a shit about that, I'd be taking one.  The song is presented in a straight up death metal fashion, chock full of blast beats and the harsh vocals consisting entirely of low death growls (which I honestly though Petri was always pretty good at pulling off), with a fun mariachi style chorus.  It's by far the most memorable track on the album, hands down, and even if you hate the song I find it hard to disagree with that.  At least something happens in it.

Unsung Heroes is easily the least interesting, and overall most disappointing Ensiferum album to date.  I don't blame the departure of Jari Maenpaa for this like so many others have been doing across the internet, as this has really always been Toivonen's band, and he fared very well for the first two albums with Petri.  I just think that the band as a whole is running out of ideas, as this entire album feels phoned-in and obligatory, as opposed to the band being excited about writing new songs they were proud of.  So yes, the popular opinion is right on the money here.  If you're new to the band, start with any of the first three albums, if you're an established fan, feel free to listen to this but be prepared for the album to finish with you scratching your head, wondering where Ensiferum went.


RATING - 44%

Ensiferum - From Afar

What?  ENSIFERUM is evolving!

Half naked Finns seems to be a very specific trope within the metal community, but there's no doubt that these drunken Scandinavians can usually churn out some excellent tunes.  Ensiferum is known for a unique blend of folk metal and power metal that many bands would come to rip off after their runaway success within the metal community.  The thing about this is that Ensiferum holds some strange intangible that bands like Northland can only dream to reach.  There's something about the way they write their songs, the way they approach their concepts, and the way the songs and concepts are executed.  I can't elucidate precisely what it is that they do differently than their contemporaries, but almost everything Ensiferum has churned out since their inception has been among the best in the genre.  They didn't get this popular by accident.

And that's what makes From Afar such a black sheep within their discography, it's not quite the same as what they'd previously given us.  Don't get me wrong, the bombast is still here, the infectious hooks, the singalong choruses, the high speed riffing with folky melodies layered overhead, everything that makes Ensiferum great is here in spades, but the way they've approached the songs on here is unlike anything prior.  See, I don't quite like this album as much as the two preceding it, but I certainly admire what the band was trying to do.  They did not want to rest on their laurels and mechanically turn out another product too similar to what the fans had come to expect from them at this point in their career.  Maybe perhaps they were trying to distance themselves from the shadow of Jari Maenpaa, which had been haunting them ever since Petri Lindroos took over guitar and lead vocal duties, since Victory Songs (the first Lindroos record) wasn't very different from Iron (the last Maenpaa record).  The fact of the matter is that From Afar stands out in their discography.

I'm sure some of you are picturing the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with everybody urging me to just "Get ON with it!", but you really need to take a journey through the album to get the full effect of what's different, because despite being noticeable enough for me to feel it ends up hurting the album somewhat, it's mainly a series of subtle nuances and alien themes that make this album what it is.  I mean, the first hint that something is up here would be the fact that the traditional intro track is damn near longer than most goregrind splits.  They've been inching further and further along with each album in this regard, but this drops the hint that this going to be a more ambitious effort than the hard hitting straightfowardness that made Victory Songs such a hit with me.  It isn't long before that little inkling really makes itself known, as nary the third real track breaks the eleven minute mark.  Yes, this album contains the epic "Heathen Throne" saga, spanning three tracks (I consider "Tumman Virran Taa" to be a part of it, it's just an intro to the second part really) and breaking 23 minutes, over a third of the album's running time.  Both parts of the saga fit well enough with each other and there's no doubt that the band put a ton of thought and effort into this epic, but it really falls flat with me.  There are standout segments throughout the two, but as one cohesive whole it's just self congratulatory and bloated.  I was so, so pumped at the prospect of an Ensiferum song longer than most episodes of any given television show, and to its credit the song(s) never drag, but there isn't enough going on to fully warrant such a huge undertaking.

This theme of ambition and trying new things pervades the majority of the album, with mixed results.  The weird synth parts on "Twilight Tavern" stick out like a sore thumb and distract from an otherwise rousing, "One More Magic Potion"-esque number, whereas the American Western banjos and whilstles in "Stone Cold Metal" are among the highlights of the album.  Another new idea that I'm personally a huge fan of is that there's finally no misplaced ballady track.  "Smoking Ruins" is the closest thing to one you'll find here, consisting almost entirely of clean vocals, but it's still a jubilant, mid paced galloper with a sense of fist pumping adrenaline that can only induce a positive crowd reaction in a live setting.  I guess you could call it a sonic successor to "Wanderer" from the previous album, albeit with a bit more of a sense of urgency and magniloquence.  But that's it, even the token short, overly aggressive song in "Elusive Reaches" stands a bit above it's predecessors in "Slayer of Light" and "The New Dawn".

Ensiferum really kicked everything up a notch when writing and recording From Afar, and yet astute readers will probably notice that is is actually rated third out of all four albums I've reviewed of the band.  Despite the heaps of praise I have for the album, the evolution, and the idea behind the album, I can't help but feel like the band isn't playing to their strengths.  The best song to be found on here is "From Afar", and it sounds like it could have been on Victory Songs with no tweaking.  Essentially, the song that sounds the most like what they've already been doing for a decade is the most well written, most entertaining, and most memorable track on the album.  With that said, their experiments aren't entirely failures, because "Stone Cold Metal" is the easy runner up in terms of the album's best song.  I suppose their biggest hit in the score comes from the fact that I just don't like the "Heathen Throne" epic all that much.  It goes and goes and goes and takes up a huge amount of time on the album but they're the least memorable songs by a long shot.  They're essentially massively huge interludes with some entertaining parts thrown in here and there.  It's not worth it, there's a brilliant 6 song EP in here being bogged down by a bloated mess of too many ideas that just don't work very well.  The upside of the album is that Ensiferum knows that they need to change up their formula if they don't want to end up as culturally relevant as a penny-farthing within five years, as the folk metal boom seems to have passed.  They can't ride on their previous success forever, so they take risks and try new things instead of rehashing previous formulas over and over.  Such a thing can work, I have a whole host of Vader albums as proof, but Ensiferum is a more ambitious band then that.  They kind of stumbled a bit on this, but it's because they're crossing treacherous terrain, and the good news is that they still wound up in one piece at the end of it.


RATING - 79%

Skyclad - Vintage Whine

Why can they never make a FULL album of greatness?

I love Skyclad, it's a scientific fact. The originators of folk metal, the only "pure" folk metal band I've ever heard, Walkyier's intelligent wit and sarcastic bark, catchiness on par with AIDS, what's not to like? Well, there is one problem with Skyclad, they have never, EVER made an album that is wonderful from start to finish. Every last record they have ever produced has had AT LEAST two or three plodding throwaways. It baffles me how this band can write songs like Cardboard City and Civil War Dance, and yet on the very same album have The One Piece Puzzle and Land of the Rising Slum. I just don't get it. They have written some of the best songs metal has ever seen, but at the same time some really boring shit that ALWAYS seems to sneak into the record. Sorry to keep capitalizing so many words, but I must emphasize how they've never managed a single amazing record... always "Half perfect, half utter piss".

That said, Vintage Whine is one of my favorite Skyclad releases because the songs that are good, are fucking amazing. That's actually how it is with their entire discography, but I guess my personal favorites are all on this one. Really, it all comes to personal taste with Skyclad.

Vintage Whine begins with Kiss my Sweet Brass, a classic Walkyier approved pun that most listeners are already used to. New listeners might be put off the the rampant puns throughout the discography, but he usually applies them quite well when it comes to actually integrating them into the songs. Anyways, the intro is over quickly, which is good because I can't see it being interesting for more than half a minute, which leads us to the title track, and what may be my favorite Skyclad song. It's mid paced, but holy fuck is this song catchy. I mean it, it's catchy on a scale that only the Bubonic Plague can match. It also sports one of the catchiest choruses in the history of man, right next to Running Wild's White Masque or Iron Maiden's Run to the Hills. I found myself singing it for well over three months, no exaggeration. On With Their Heads!, The Silver Cloud's Dark Lining, Little Miss Take, and Something to Cling to are all speedy and catchy monsters that really make the album great. The first three tracks are really some of the best in heavy metal history, I'm willing to go that far. The Silver Cloud's Dark Lining is a great place to start if you are just discovering Skyclad. It was the first song I heard and it made me a fan instantly.

But if you look at the track listing, you may realize I completely skipped over tracks four through eight. That is because that is where the obligatory "this album is rocking too hard, we better drag it down a bit" section is. You'll notice that most of their albums work this way. There always a section of three or four songs in the middle or end that just drag the entire album down. Plodding riffs, boring drums, not catchy or memorable, and overlong. Even if it's a normal song length of about four or five minutes, it feels like much longer. They're never bad songs per se, but compared to the rest of the album, they just.... suck. A Well Beside the River isn't bad, but it's plodding and just goes on and on and on and on. It's the heaviest song on the album, but it's just boring. No Strings Attached is a straight up folk tune ala the days of Irrational Anthems, and I don't like it one bit. Bury Me sounds like it will bring the album back up to speed, but never manages it. It sounds similar to the title track, but it is severely missing the magic on the first one. Not to mention the chorus is boring as hell. And Cancer of the Heart is TOO LONG. It's only about five and a half minutes, but there's about two minutes worth of ideas. Thankfully, it is at least catchy in parts, something the last three songs missed.

Little Miss Take is SUCH a breath of fresh air after the last pool of stagnation. The album can best be described as the Grand Canyon. It's so high up, it's awesome... but then there is a very sudden dip, in fact a cliff, leading to a deep valley. You trudge across the valley floor, doing your best to stitch up your wounds from the fall as you cross. Then suddenly, you're at the other end, you're high up again, and all is right with the world. There is such a sudden dip in quality on this album it's staggering. I chose to review this album above all of the others because it starts the highest up, and almost reaches the center of the earth in the middle.

An album with a ton of potential. Tracks 2, 3, 4, 9, and 10 are all essential listening (I didn't include the intro/outro in my rating, or else it would be a tidbit higher, unfortunately they don't feel like full songs, so no rating). This could be one of the best albums ever.....

RATING - 77%

Northland - Freezing Sadness

Let's play spot the plagiarism... THERE IT IS!

Have you ever heard of Ensiferum? You know, that mega popular folk metal band that so masterfully blends folk influences with power metal? If the answer is yes, then you may as well skip over Northland. Freezing Sadness is the name attached to this demo, and it's actually rather surprising that Northland remains unsigned. Ever since Ensiferum's cult popularity got so incredibly large, I figured that big name labels like Nuclear Blast or whatever would jump on this sound; and considering Freezing Sadness uses some of the exact same melodies as Iron and generally sounds like little more than a carbon copy of Ensiferum, Northland would logically be one of the first bands to be picked up. Nevertheless, here we are, knee deep in six Spaniards' pretentious foray into the sonic territory that a certain Finnish group opened up.

Nothing here is offensively bad, just really bland. I hate to keep comparing this to Ensiferum, but there really isn't much else to compare this to. The opening track, "Where the Heroes Die..." uses melodies heard on Ensiferum's "Into Battle" and even a few themes from Victory Songs. Whether this was intentional or not is completely up to the reader/listener to decide, but the resemblance is uncanny nonetheless. Fruity, bouncy keyboard melodies are strewn liberally over the top of some decent riffs and mediocre drumming, but they don't seem too out of place, so that's a plus. The subtle use of background choirs adds a nice atmospheric touch at times, but they never shut the fuck up, so they really lose their mystical quality quickly. The demo also stays at a fairly mid-paced tempo throughout the duration apart from "Warriors of Ice" and parts of "The Awakening", which really pick up the pace. I also feel it deserves mention that the production is fairly okay for a band's first demo. The vocals are mixed kind of high and the guitar is a really bad distortion sound, but it's not terrible. This isn't necessarily bad, just... there. Freezing Sadness works as a decent fix for fans of the Power/Folk Metal style, but it won't open any new doors for established fans nor newcomers.

RATING - 55%



Originally written for http://www.metalcrypt.com

Ensiferum - Victory Songs

Quit yer bellyachin'

Yes, Jari Maenpaa left. Yes, Petri Lindroos from Norther is the replacement. You can stop crying now. I'll be the first to admit, Maenpaa is years ahead of Lindroos in the vocal department, but he is a decent replacement and fills in the shoes adequately. Is it enough to mark the album down purely because Maenpaa is no longer part of the band? No, not at all. It seems a lot of flak gets thrown at this album because when he left, he apparently took all of the magic with him, and then wanked with it all over Wintersun.

This is far from the truth, when given the chance, Victory Songs is a great record on par with the previous two. I've rated it the highest out of the three, but that's because this is the most consistent. Bitch and moan all you want, but there are only two tracks that aren't as good as the rest on this one. I had the same problem with Iron, so shouldn't the lesser number of tracks warrant a lower score than that one? No, because while Raised by the Sword and The New Dawn may be mediocre in comparison to the rest, they aren't anywhere near the shit burgers that were Lost in Despair and Tears.

The music as a whole seems to alternate between a tad faster than on Iron, to about the same pace as Old Man or Little Dreamer from the debut. Blood is the Price of Glory opens as the first full song with furious double bass destruction, an energetic yowl from our new vocalist, and a signature folk melody that will get stuck in your head for days. Upon hearing this, I wondered why everybody was saying that all of the magic was gone. If all of the complaints were that they haven't progressed as a band, I believe it could have a smidgen of merit, but this is not a step down from the last record at all! I am not complaining that they aren't changing though, mainly because I believe that if you find a formula that works wonderfully, there is no need to change. Don't fix what ain't broken I guess. Ensiferum's speedy blend of folk metal works brilliantly to me, and I see nothing wrong with continuing the ass kickage.

Now I'd like to address what I DON'T like about the album, and they are tracks 7 and 8. Raised by the Sword tries to lull you into a false sense of security before punching you in the balls. Well, it gets point A across, but ends up missing your groin and accidentally punches you in the shin. Sure, it'll sting for a bit, but it goes away fairly quickly. The New Dawn on the other hand goes straight for the throat, but once again misses and pokes you in the eye. I'm not a sadomasochist, so I don't know for sure, but I can never imagine eye gouging to be a pleasureful kind of pain. The songs aren't horrible.... they're not failing grade, but they don't really fit into the album in the sense that they.... well, just aren't very good. As I've said earlier, mediocre. The melodies aren't as strong or catchy here, and the riffs under them fails to make up for the melodic shortcomings.

Another thing that seems to piss people off, are the quasi-ballads Wanderer and Victory Song. I can see why people dislike them, but I think they pull them off magnificently. The former is a very restrained song, which is strange for Ensiferum. Even on Old Man they have melodies all over the damn place, here the riffs sound like they are being held back from what they want to become. This actually works out wonderfully, as huge, galloping, speedy folk riffs would not sound right on a song like this. Wanderer is catchy and memorable, so it is a classic in my book. Victory Song breaks the ten minute mark, officially making it the "epic" of the album. Although it takes nearly three minutes to fully pick up, it never feels like it is meandering or lost. The acoustic intro sets up the victorious distorted progression, which again leads into the explosive verse riff. Victorious may be a bizarre adjective to use when describing a riff, but it really fits. The whole song continually progresses and never falls into the pit of "okay, I want the song to be longer, what do I do? ATMOSPHERIC BULLSHIT!!" ala Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Finnish passage is great as well, it's hard not to sing along, even when you have no freakin' clue what they are saying.

I can't really delve into each song, as they are all vastly different (Ahti is a more straightforward headbanger, Deathbringer from the Sky has some heavy power metal stylings, One More Magic Potion is one of the most overtly folky, et cetera) but trust me when I say there is something for almost any metal fan here. I think it just may be Ensiferum's crowning achievement, but I'm still torn between Victory Songs and Iron. This scored four percent higher because the two obligatory boring tracks aren't nearly as bad as the two from Iron, but the great songs aren't as magnificent as Iron's were. It's a toss up really, it's up to you to decide. If you can get past the fact that the main songwriter / vocalist / guitarist is gone, and take the music for it's own merit, you'll find yourself enjoying a top notch Ensiferum record.

RATING - 91%

Ensiferum - Iron

Two songs ruin an otherwise perfect album

A passing reference to Ensiferum was given to me on an internet forum about two or three years ago. I was asking for metal bands (I wasn't quite new to the genre per se, I have metal parents, but at the time all I really listened to was Metallica, Pantera, and Megadeth... I blame it on my young age), and somebody said I'd probably enjoy a certain brand of viking metal and recommended Ensiferum, Asmegin, and Wintersun among others. I dismissed it and assumed it would be stupid. Ensiferum is the band that proved my young ears wrong, and essentially turned me into what/who I am today.

Why review Iron first? I was going to review Victory Songs to try and convince people that it isn't as bad as they make it out to be, but Iron is a very sentimental album to me and I feel that there is no better place to start. From the ethereal introduction of Ferrrum Aeternum, to the blistering fury of Tale of Revenge, to the melodic Finnish lines of Lai Lai Hei, to the almost power metallish stylings of Sword Chant, this album does very few things wrong... in fact, the closing ballad, Tears, Slayer of Light, and Lost in Despair are the only tracks that aren't almost perfect to my ears. The remaining 8 tracks are glory incarnate. Ensiferum seems to be one of the few folk metal bands that don't throw in goofy folk instruments purely because they can, almost everything they do fits the songs wonderfully.

Let's address the band members for a second, this album has the man that everybody seems to love, Mr. Jari Maenpaa. He is indeed a wonderful vocalist, but am I the only person who hates his clean screaming on Sword Chant? It's technically atrocious, but he somehow makes it a ton of fun and you find yourself not caring that he sounds like Corpsegrinder trying to imitate Rob Halford (that's all speculation though, for all I know George has a wonderful falsetto, but it's a pretty safe assumption that he doesn't). Anyways, Maenpaa is a masterful songwriter, and this seems to be his last hurrah before he got a little too self indulgent with Wintersun. Tale of Revenge and Into Battle are beautifully crafted and actually epic... they are years ahead of some of the faux epic pap he'd later write.

Anyways, other than maybe the other guitarist, Markus Toivonen, nobody in the band is really noteworthy. They are all great and fit the sound perfectly, but nothing spectacular really.

But when you think about it, that's what makes a band great. Bands like Dream Theater fail to hold my interest, despite the fact that all of the members are gods of their respective instruments. When a group of musicians can come together and write amazing music, it ceases to matter how technically proficient they are.

On the subject of the music, it's hard to say. It's hard for me to actually list the qualities that make them so great. Could it be the insidiously catchy folk melodies? Could it be Maenpaa's sinister snarl? The intensity? The hookiness? You can throw pretty much any positive quality in the air and it would doubtlessly land on Ensiferum somewhere. So to avoid constant repetition, I'll point out some of the downfalls.

All I can say about Lost in Despair is.... you're doing it wrong. It's slow, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't work. It is the only song that is not memorable, not to mention it is needlessly overlong, and I believe the album could be infinitely better if this was cut. And as if to make up for the ploddingness of that one, it is followed by Slayer of Light, arguably the fastest song on here. While it is a noticeable step up from the previous track, it doesn't seem to do as much as the first few songs did. It's over quickly, which usually wouldn't be change anything, except it doesn't seem to do what it wants to do. It's like the album's redheaded stepchild. "Hey, can I go out and party with Lai Lai Hei and Into Battle?" "No, fuck you kid, go wash the dishes". Keep in mind it's a very minor step down, but a step down nonetheless.

And the only other downpoint would be the closer, Tears. I honestly don't know what they were thinking with this one. It never gets cool, it never gets catchy, it's actually not even that beautiful. I don't know, this one doesn't evoke the feeling that I'm listening to masterful art like other slower songs do, you know?

On the plus sides, the two instrumental numbers are awesome, the title track destroys and is a blast to sing along with (I swear he says DOOM 2 SUCKS ASS!! at about 1:22), and the same goes for Sword Chant. You haven't lived 'till you've heard a room full of drunk folk scream along with that one. Into Battle is pretty much the perfect song, it's fast, catchy, furious, essentially the quintessential song for the fast speed/folk school of viking metal. The epic Lai Lai Hei is a monster as well, and let's not forget the perfection that is Tale of Revenge, which, after the somewhat shaky start, becomes one of the best Ensiferum songs ever.

Wow, I was sure this album was going to earn an A, but the extreme shittyness of Lost in Despair and Tears REALLY bogged down the average. I hate to do this, but as an objective reviewer I feel I must... this album gets a B+. But really, it'd be a 98 according to my calculations if those two songs were removed/ignored. So, either utilize the skip track button, or use them as fuel to prove why you think Ensiferum sucks so much, it all really depends on if you are a fan or not.


RATING - 87%

Ensiferum - Ensiferum

They have no idea what they're doing at this point

Jari Maenpaa is regarded as a musical genius, and he only deserves about 10% of that title. When he's on the ball, he can really smoke face, but the problem is that he is great at one thing while ranging from mediocre to bad at virtually everything else. He is heralded for the variety of music he's penned in his short career, and I can't take that away from him. He's covered folk/power metal blends, epic melodic death metal, touches of black (although nothing too profound), straight up Finnish folk and others throughout his work with both Ensiferum and Wintersun. The problem is that he's only really good at the first two styles. Ensiferum's self titled debut focuses mainly on the folk/power mix with some straight folk areas here and there, but it's one of the most wildly inconsistent albums I've ever laid ears upon. One of the most important things to understand in the world of music is the difference between variety and inconsistency. While there is doubtlessly a variety of styles on display here, the drastic peaks and valleys when it comes to their quality is staggering. City is varied, The Human Equation is inconsistent. Duke Lion Fights the Terror is varied, Nightfall in Middle-Earth is inconsistent.

The inconsistency is the Achilles heel of Ensiferum, and it makes listening to the whole album in one sitting actually fairly tedious. I always appreciate breaks and interludes when they're necessary, but the slower, folkier, cleaner sections clash with the fast paced, double bass fury of the highlights. Tracks like "Eternal Wait", and "Old Man" slow the galloping warrior to a boring stroll. Even the songs that switch around like "Abandoned" end up sounding weird and forced. Hell, the entire last two minutes of the aforementioned song are an out of place attempt at epicism that just hurts the album and keeps it from moving along. The awkward pacing makes it sound like the album and band just can't make up their minds as to what they want to do. The fact of the matter is that Ensiferum just flat out didn't know how to write songs very well at this point in their career. They noodle around with a lot of different ideas, about a little over half are actually good ones, and they manage to craft a couple masterpieces, but the album as a whole is horrendously flawed and uncomfortable.

Despite this incredibly annoying tendency, Ensiferum is a worthy listen if only for the good tracks. The first three proper songs are some of the best that the band has ever released, all of them blending folk melodies, metallic aggression, and a bombastic and epic feeling perfectly. "Guardians of Fate" is probably the best as it is (with the exception of maybe "Slayer of Light" or "Ahti" from later albums) the least fluffed up track the band has ever recorded. It relies less on soaring keys and twangy instruments and more on sharp riffing and pure attitude. The drumming is especially powerful when pushed to the forefront and is one of the main reasons the faster songs are so much better than the slow ones. It's not that the drummer is particularly talented, it's just that he seems to convey a bit more passion when he's running on all cylinders. The folk overtones are strange, as they seem to be more prominent on quicker, better tracks like "Windrider" and "Battle Song", but contrary to what I may have implied, they're never irritating or overdone. In fact, the fact that they're less noticeable on the ballads may well be another key factor in determining why the slow songs suck so much and the fast ones slay so much.

This isn't a bad album, per se, just an annoying one. All of the best songs are of one main style, while all of the bad ones are of another. To me, this clearly signifies what the band is good at and what they should stop dicking around with. It seems that Ensiferum never fully realized this and constantly tried to knock around slower half ballads for every record they've ever made. Surprise, they're always the weakest points of the albums. From this point, they only get better. They focus more and more on the epic metal and the songwriting gets more and more ambitious. The good songs on display (the first three, "Windrider", "Battle Song", and maybe half of "Little Dreamer") are pretty much the best they've ever done, but the other half of the album is fairly shit. As a result, we are left with the weakest Ensiferum album. If you don't mind having some slime and boogers on your gold, this is worth checking out.

RATING - 61%