In 2008, Scotland’s Alestorm took the international metal world by storm with their brand of likeable ‘Pirate Metal’ that mixed NWBHM, folk metal, Pirate shanty tunes and Running Wild imagery, even resulting in a US run with the Pagan Knights tour earlier this year. Well, here is the follow up, and though I feel a […]

Only 2 albums into their career, Scotland’s purveyors of “True Scottish Pirate Metal”, Alestorm hardly need any introduction. Their debut, the raucous, Captain Morgan’s Revenge, put the fun back into metal, and with the follow up, Black Sails at Midnight, the band have further upped the Pirate-y goodness. Chock full of brazen metal seas shanties of rum, women and plunder, the band seems destined to truly blow up on an international level, aided by the bands recent tour of the US. I caught up with the pleasant and portly pirate who plays guitars, Dani Evans to find out a little more about this group of amicable musical privateers….

Unless it’s a play on Hellhammer, Hellsaw has to be one of the most unoriginal, ‘scary’ black metal band names I think I’ve ever heard. And then to call the album Cold, well, I wasn’t expecting this be a very inspiring listen. But surprise surprise, these Austrians have delivered a really solid, enjoyable example of […]

Sweden’s Isole play a stellar brand of Epic Doom Metal akin to the likes of Candlemass, Revelation & early Solitude Aeturnus. Yeah, once again I find it best to get right to the point. This new release finds the band at, I believe, it’s pinnacle of monolithic mastery. One will find loads of booming, Doom-filled […]

The marriage of traditional folk music (from many countries) with metal has become more than just an exotic sub-genre. The two united seems almost perfect at times and there is a rabid following of fans. However, when the band goes complete folk and abandons all metal ideals (Eluveitie’s Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion), it’s a […]

When among some other promo discs to be reviewed I caught sight of To The Grave, the new album by Danish Power Metal five-piece Iron Fire, I didn’t feel deliriously happy at the thought I had to look into this doing. Honestly, I had never had a high regard for this band’s previous attempts and […]

I’m usually all for labels signed bands and releasing stuff outside of their usual fare, but Italian deathcore on Napalm Records? Fail. It’s not even very good deathcore at that, making Damned to Blindness an even bigger failure. Sounding like every teenage middle tier American myspace death metal band that’s listened to The Black Dahlia […]

Hailing from Finland, Folk three-piece (with the aid of some noteworthy session members) Crimfall entered the folk metal fray back in 2008 with their Burning Winds demo. And now with their Napalm Records debut, As the Path Unfolds, those demo tracks as well as eight brand new tracks deliver exactly what you’d expect from a Finnish Folk/Viking band-and more. With the luscious Helena Haaparanta providing an operatic gloss to the expectedly up beat, typically Finnish, blackened yet epic and bouncy fare, Crimfall, like the recent release by Kivimentsan Druidi, Arkona and country mates Battlelore, have given folk/Viking metal some elegance amid the grime and chain mail driven throes typically associated with the genre. From the bombastic chorus of “The Crown of Treason” through the ethnic chants of “Wildfire Season” and Middle Eastern Aura of “Sun Orphaned” to ballad “Aubade” the album covers all of Folk Metal bases with confidence, gusto and an orchestral grandeur. I visited with guitarist Jakke Viitala to find out a little more about one of Finnish folk metal’s newest additions…

Hot on the heels on Century Media’s Kivimetsan Druidi, come another female fronted, dirt, fur and paint covered folk metal band infusing classical/orchestral elements into the tried and true Finnish take on folk/pagan/Viking metal as plied by the likes of Ensiferum, Turisas and such. The results are largely successful, mostly due to Helena Haaparanta who […]

Nurtured by bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Saxon, Accept and Helloween, I don’t remember being much of a Grave Digger fan in my early years of metalhood. Yet, these Germans have been around since 1980 and have a lot of experience under their belt, which is thoroughly proven by the thirteen studio […]

So to coincide with the band’s current US Pagan Knights run with Suidakra and Tyr, Scotland’s purveyors of Pirate metal have given us a 4 song EP to tide us over until the next album, slated for a 2009 release. The EP consists of 1 new song (the 6 minute title track), a reworked track […]

Norwegian viking folk metal band Ásmegin has been in existence since 1998 yet Arv is just their second full length release. I have known of their existence for some eight years, ever since Marius tried to set up a multiple language interview between me and a band on his label. The positive that came out […]

Pop this disk in and it takes only about twenty seconds to suspect it is Kampfar and less than a minute to be sure it could be no one else. All pervasive is the Kampfar sound and if you don’t know what that is by now expect to be turned into a frog by the […]

I go through phases where I’ve had just about all the power and prog that I can stand, and I’m in one of those right now. So, in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I’m feeling kind of uninspired to write about a lot of the CDs sitting on my desk now. That […]

I knew this would be some sort of power metal after one glance at the cover art and logo. What I didn’t know was how damn good these guys are.  I will admit I love power metal, but I don’t waste my time with mediocre, sub par acts.  These guys know what they’re doing, and […]

It’s been said that anyone who generalizes is an idiot, but it’s gotten to the point where if I see a CD that has a pretty face on the cover and the Napalm logo on the back, I can predict exactly what I’m going to get. Beast Within is no different: inoffensive, poppy midtempo gothic […]

Here’s a fine folk metal album from Russia’s Arkona that continues Napalm’s recent run of solid folk metal albums (Svartsot, Heidevolk, Alestorm and to some extent Hollenthon) and should please fans of typically Russian/Eastern European bands like Butterfly Temple, Obtest, Skyforger Pagan Reign as well as the usual folk overload fare like Finntroll and Asmegin. […]

To this day, one of my very favorite metal songs is “The Calm Before the Storm”, the sort of title track from Hollenthon’s second album, 2001’s With Vilest of Worms to Dwell, an album that truly opened my eyes to how death metal, symphonic, classical overtures and ethnic instrumentation could go hand in. The album […]

Hard to believe it’s been seven years since the release of Hollenthon‘s previous opus, With Vilest of Worms to Dwell. Besides featuring one of the more memorable covers that year (a coiled snake with a protruding, knuckled spine), it boasted epic, symphonic swells over vaguely Viking riffage and coarse vocals. It should have been right […]

Sometimes you see an album cover and just hope that the music inside matches the imagery. In this case, the graphic of five masked phantoms, convened like some interdimensional alien tribunal, could have just been another slapped-on gimmick – but thankfully, it’s the perfect visual for one of the more harrowing and hypnotic tech-death albums […]

Hailing from the Netherlands, Heidevolk are Napalm’s latest folk metal darlings. Hot on the heels of the likes of Svartsot and Alestorm, Heidevolk might be the best of the bunch, and arguably the best folk metal album I have heard since Ásmegin’s Hin Vordende Sod & Sø. Apart from the expected gallop of Viking-tinged hymns […]

Female-fronted Epic Power Metal…this description alone should be enough to inform you if you’re interested in going any further. Still with me? Ok, then. Edenbridge is what I call a “Genre Band” (I need to copyright that). If you’re into the specific genre to which they belong, then no arguable reason can be found for […]

Though there was a time that I really enjoyed it, I’m tiring of folk and power metal with classical female vocals. I think pretty much everything that can be done with it has been done with it, and frankly, I’d rather hear the women in metal sounding a little more aggressive. Of course, there’s always […]

Knowing that Power Quest was formed by keyboard player Steve Williams and bassist Steve Scott after leaving Dragon Heart (now known as Dragonforce, of course) in 2001, you might expect some resemblance between the two bands. The good news, however, is that Power Quest spends less time showing off their technical wankery and puts more emphasis […]

When I first heard Stuck Mojo in the mid-1990s, the sound was fresh and interesting – a solid, Southern-flavored metal band fronted by a rapper. With the rise of the rap-rock trend and the nu-metal trends in the late 90s and early part of this decade, the sound began to lose its edge. The band […]