No one here needs me to tell you, but I’m gonna do it anyway – times is tough! As such, I recently took up a weekend gig to help make ends meet and, after a nearly decade hiatus, rejoined the food service and hospitality industry (bear with me I promise there’s a point to all […]

In the end, how do you want to be remembered? Will you be remembered at all? The ultimate weight of our own legacy hangs like a formless specter, bearing down on us with every waking moment, growing heavier and more gnarled with every step towards this life’s inevitable conclusion. And that’s kind of a bitch, […]

Do you ever listen to music from another country and after a bit, you try to sing along? Like, it’s obvious that you don’t know let’s say Finnish; but you hear this song from a Finnish band, and you love the shit out of it and suddenly you think you know Finnish and are fluent […]

A few years ago I discovered the folk metal genre.  A variety of bands ranging from death to black to cultural and traditional metal were using these influences.  I got hooked, whether bands were using the influence sparingly or full-fledged the variety of sounds became addictive to me and most of all these bands put […]

For metal mastermind Andy Marshall, Saor has been a means of immersing listeners in his beloved Scottish history and heritage through a sprawling, intoxicating mix of incredibly atmospheric black and folk metal, dubbed colloquially by Marshall himself as “Caledonian Metal.” For all intents and purposes, while each of his previous albums certainly had some characteristics […]

If you follow this site and my writings (you’re not the only one as I’m kind of a big deal), you might be asking yourself why a folk metal album is getting the review treatment from me. Instead, you should immediately be thinking the subject of this review is entirely worth your attention. It’s been […]

A well-respected colleague of mine once advised me that it was a bad idea to stay with a job or company for more than 10 years – and even that long was pushing it. The idea being, after a certain amount of time in the same setting, you begin to lose your passion for the […]

I’m just gonna go ahead and start a personal series called “Dumbass Steve Discovers a Band That’s Been Around a Long Time but He’s Just Now Finding Out About.” I’ve officially made it a habit. In my defense, Pennsylvania/New Jersey’s Duskmourn (active since 2012) don’t appear to have any kind of super active social media […]

As I made clear in my review of 2018s Nyárutó, Hungary’s Dalriada is one of my new favorite discoveries of the last few years. Their infectious brand of bouncy but still crunchy, ethnic folk metal is just fun as heck even after 10 albums. And album number 11 is no different. Continuing the seasonal/month named […]

HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS. We need to talk about this. As I’m sure you’re all well aware, the world of metal is often filled with dominating trends – a band will grab everyone’s attention and a specific subgenre will start blowing the hell up as record labels scramble to find the next best example. As […]

I gotta hand it to Cruz del Sur – this label keeps taking me by surprise. Granted, this might be more to do with my apparent inability to just retain what is an obvious, unmistakable truth, but it seems like every time I venture into one of their new releases, I start off chuckling to […]

OK, this is an odd, but intriguing one. ( and for clarification its Wood-Scream, not Woods-Cream) Hailing from Russia, with a few releases under their belt and playing folk metal and being female-fronted, I was hoping for some sort of epic eastern European folk romps akin to Dalriada or Grai. But instead, I got a […]

Here is some super pleasant and fun Folk/medieval/’renaissance ‘ metal from France that has traditional instruments like Accordions, Bohas (courtesy of Skiltron’s Pierre Delaporte) Hurdy-gurdys and Tabor Pipes, traditional Gascon language, as well as some actual medieval tunes as bonus tracks on the CD. Now, this isn’t your expected folk metal, meaning it’s not your […]

North Carolina’s Æther Realm caused quite a stir with their astounding 2017 sophomore album, Tarot. Indulging in an addictive, intricate form of melodic death and folk. The album was my number one pick in 2017 and is regularly revisited several years later. With success comes high expectations, and prior to its release, worries had set […]

US based folk/epic/viking metal is somewhat of a rarity. I’d have to go back to maybe Hammer Horde to find one that really hit everything on the head. But here comes Pennsylvania’s Frost Giant and their ambitious and often down right brilliant debut. Listen- there is a lot going on here- not just epic folk […]

When I fall for a band,  I fall HARD. In 2015 it was Vallendusk, and early last year it was Sabaton, and my latest infatuation has been with Hungary’s prolific Celtic/folk metal act Dalriada (formerly known as Echoes of Dalriada). I discovered them on Spotify while listening to the Asmegin radio station, the song “Hajdútánc” […]