Falconers, elves and balancing on a ledge

The early summer of 2014 was a good time to be a folk metal fan, as June brought on not one, but three such albums, mostly from bands that took their sweet time working on their next release.

Falconer, Black moon rising

Black moon rising is a pleasant album, that sends out tons of good vibes, without becoming too cheesy or fainty, in typical Falconer vein. Relying heavily on Mathias Blad’s simple, yet clear and warm voice and on catchy and melodious hooks that inspire you to sing along, it doesn’t depart from the recipe of success that the band established with the first releases. The only difference is that it seems a bit more powerful and more aggressive than the previous albums, but not by much. Also, Falconer set out to be a mix of power and folk metal so intertwined that I don’t think even they used to know in which direction is the balance tipping. On this album, however, the balance clearly tips towards power metal, as the folk aspect is almost entirely overlooked and the only truly folkish track is Scoundrel and the Squire (which is a nice little medieval song, with a waltz-like tempo).

As a love child of these two genres, you can obviously expect them to have cheesy lyrics, catchy tunes, male choirs and guitar solos and this album makes no exception. That’s pretty much all you have, actually, as there’s not much variety within songs and most of them follow the classic “verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus repeated ad nauseam” structure

The biggest problem this album has is that while each of the song is really nice taken separately, once you put them together, the lack of variety and inspiration becomes very obvious. This has always been a problem for Falconer and while I do enjoy very much to listen to their songs individually, I cannot stand a whole album of pretty much the same thing redone over and over again. When I got to the middle of the album, I was already annoyed by the monotony of it all. Thankfully, the second half raises the bar up a bit, with more diverse and memorable pieces like Dawning of a sombre age, Age of runes and especially The priory, which has an awesome beginning and is a lot happier and more folky then the rest of the album.

Best songs/ weakest songs: Although The priory stands out a bit among all the others, for the most part I can’t separate the songs enough to differentiate a “best” and “worst” one. That can be either good, or bad, depending on how you look at it (it doesn’t have a bad song, but then again, it doesn’t have a particularly good one either).

Equilibrium, Erdentempel

Clearly the best and most memorable album of the trifecta, Erdentempel is as German and as Equilibrium-ish as it can possibly be. It’s an epic record that puts a smile on my face, with a music simple and positive, charged with joy and naturalness. The instrumental is so folkish and joyful and full of enthusiasm that it makes me want to jump, dance, mosh… in fact, if you can listen to this standing completely still, then I dare say there’s something wrong with you 😛

First of all, I really like it when a band decides to sing in its native language and for a folk band, this works particularly well as it brings out a sense of authenticity. The only thing I don’t really get is why Heavy Chill has an English title and yet the lyrics are in German. The best part about this album, however, is the great variety, especially when it’s manifested inside a genre that isn’t particularly known for experimentation and crossing the boundaries. As a creation of simple men, used mostly as a form of expressing the soul of a people, folk music is by definition simple and effective, but that doesn’t mean it has to be reduced to repeating the same song over and over again (you know who I’m talking to, Falconer).

And Equilibrium take this “simple, yet effective” characteristic and run away with it, while also using a great range of instruments, in a pretty surprising way. Even though the growling is a bit monotonous (as it usually is anyway), the instrumental more than makes up for it. As opposed to other songs from the same genre, the tracks from Erdentempel provide room for evolution and it doesn’t mean that you heard the whole song if you heard the first half of it (ahem, Falconer). There are a lot of changes of pace and of atmosphere (as many as you can have in a band that sings folk metal with medieval influences, of course; it’s Equilibrium, not Opeth, you know) and there are even some clean vocals at some point, a premiere for them. I love that for the most part they’re epic and triumphant, but they still have moments where they prove they don’t take themselves too seriously, like the chorus from Wirtshaus Gaudi, where the lead singer sounds like a little troll that’s enjoying chaos and mischief.

All in all, it’s a good, solid album, but one that’s mostly appreciated by fans of the genre, so don’t go expecting any life-altering revelations, because you won’t find them here. Even though they don’t fully depart from the cliches of the genre, Equilibrium seem to have matured and they sound more melodic and coherent than ever.

Best songs: Waldschrein, Wellengang (it’s epic and it’s awesome and I don’t even mind that the guitar is straight out of The Pirates of the Caribbean OST), Apokalypse (it’s a nice spot of colour in the middle of all the folk metal)

Weakest songs: Freiflug (that sing-song “aaaa” in the chorus puts me to sleep; it doesn’t help that they keep repeating it all throughout the song)

Elvenking, The pagan manifesto

I’m not sure what Elvenking were trying to achieve with this album and sadly, I don’t think they themselves know it either. It’s a collection of songs (sorry, I can’t call it an album) that oscillates between some unfortunate experiments and following their recipe of success. It has been described as a return to the roots by most and while some songs are indeed that, it’s their most bold album so far. That does not make it a good album, however.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate their desire for innovation and what they were trying to achieve, but the execution fell a bit short. Ok, that’s a mild way to put it, the more accurate thing would be to say they should stick to bouncy happy music and leave the 12-minutes epics to bands who can do them properly. The individual parts don’t sound bad at all, but they have HUGE problems when it comes to transitions, they are very awkward and sudden. It sounds like someone pasted 7 different songs together, without any worry about cursiveness. There’s alternative metal, there are gothic choirs, there are even some Dani Filth-like screeches and for the most part I’m listening to the whole display of forces with bafflement and thinking to myself “now why’d you have to go do that????”. Most of the times, there isn’t coherence even within the same musical section, as the vocal line and the instrumental sound like they’re from totally different pictures.

The vocals are not that great either. I was never a fan of Damnagoras’ voice (in fact I avoided Elvenking for quite some time precisely because of the voice), but honestly, I would take back that old hollow voice in a heartbeat if this is what the alternative is. I don’t know if he’s going through a middle age crisis or something, but his voice sounds like that of a teenager. Immature, screechy, shaky and with far less individuality than he used to have.

At the opposite pole there’s the medieval bouncy cheesy folk metal they were known for, which they have clearly mastered (I especially love the use of the violin, it’s the best part of the whole album). Elvenlegions, The druid of ritual oak and Towards the shores are all nice catchy songs that put you in a good mood (hey, they even remembered that each album has to have at least three references to elves; they are the Elvenking, after all), but my favourite is Pagan manifesto. It’s a crazy whirlwind of everything that I listen to folk metal for and like I said, I think they should just stick to that since they’re obviously not mature enough for… whatever those new songs want to be.

Best songs: definitely Pagan manifesto, I just love it

Weakest songs: as the embodiment of everything that is wrong with this album, I nominate King of the elves