Tag Archives: Folk Metal

Black Metal, Doom Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, Song Reviews

Primordial – Gods To The Godless (Song Review)

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“We are your cross to bear”

On Gods To The Godless, the first song proper on their third album Spirit The Earth Aflame, Ireland’s Primordial nail the unique pagan metal style they will become renowned for: weighty black metal with rolling, folky rhythms and A.A. Nemtheanga’s impassioned vocals. Gods To The Godless is similar in topic to Bathory’s seminal One Rode To Asa Bay but where that song depicted a subjugated, converted Norse community with sympathy, Gods To The Godless takes the viewpoint of the oppressor. And Nemtheanga spits outs threatening declarations with spine-chilling intensity.

Black Metal, Death Metal, Genre, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, HMO Digests, NWOBHM

HO HO HMO Digest – 25th December 2023

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It’s a time for giving, a time for getting, a time for forgiving and time for another HMO Digest.

Blog Shenanigans

Since the last digest, I’ve been having fun with the new “Album Of The Day” posts. It’s giving me the opportunity to post photos from my collection and talk about albums again but without having to “review” the albums. I used to do posts like these on Facebook and I don’t see why they should have all the fun. Especially when they tried to ban me for posting a picture of boobs (the cover of Akercocke’s The Goat Of Mendes album). I photoshopped a goat over the nipples but that wasn’t enough apparently!

Looking forward to 2024…I’ve been thinking that a lot of my gaps in posting are because I often listen to a lot of one band, for example Black Sabbath, and I’ll post about them and then feel like I can’t post about them again for ages. So from now on, I’m just going to post about whatever I like, whenever I like. So if that means 12 posts in a row about Virgin Steele then you’ll just have to put up with it.

Best Album Of 2023

I called it pretty early in my July post about their song Tankespinnerens Smerte. Dødheimsgard’s Black Medium Current was my top album of 2023. Excellent, eclectic and moving black metal.

The runner up was Primordial with How It Ends which finds the Irish band, ten albums in, at their soaring, defiant best.

New Stuff

Usually at the end of year I end up having a blow out on some ridiculous deluxe box set but that hasn’t happened this year, despite the best efforts of Camel and Mott The Hoople to tempt me. I did have a rare wander round the music shops in both Edinburgh and Glasgow and picked up some goodies though!

Incantation – Onward To Golgotha (Relapse Records 1992)

The last couple of months have been unusually good on the live album front too, with excellent new live releases from Cradle Of Filth with Trouble And Their Double Lives, Mayhem with Daemonic Rites and Tom G. Warrior’s Triumph Of Death with Resurrection Of The Flesh, a live set of classic Hellhammer tunes. UGH!

I also bought the absolutely stunning new revised and expanded edition of Dayal Patterson’s book Black Metal: Evolution Of The Cult. The original version was already (easily) the best book on the subject and essential reading for anyone interested in the genre. But the new edition has an improved layout, additional material and bands added that weren’t included in the original due to length restrictions. I’m going to love getting tore into this over the Xmas holidays.

HMO Salutes

Steve Riley – (died aged 67) drummer in many bands but is most known round these parts for his stint in W.A.S.P.

Charlie Dominici – (died aged 72) the former singer in Dream Theater, having appreared on their under-rated debut album When Dream And Day Unite from 1988.

Torben Ulrich  – (died aged 95) I normally only do these about people that are in my CD collection but Torben (father of Metallica’s Lars Ulrich) won the hearts of all in the metal scene when he uttered the immortal words: “delete that”.

What I Was Listening To While I Wrote This Post

Malokarpatan’s Vertumnus Caesar is another highlight from 2023. Excellent blackened, proggy heavy metal from Slovakia that takes you back to the era of formative black metal influences like Master’s Hammer, Tormentor (Hun) and Mercyful Fate.

Upcoming Stuff

2024 is already shaping up nicely, with the likes of Saxon, Ihsahn, The Obsessed, Ace Frehley, Bruce Dickinson and Judas Priest all having new albums scheduled for release. And there are so many great bands like the BulletBoys working on new albums (BulletBoys!) that I can’t even be bothered listing them. Although I will say that one of them is the BulletBoys.

And that’s about it. Hope you had an amazing 2023 and have an even better 2024. Thanks for reading and remember… FOLLOW THE MASTER.

Album Reviews, Genre, Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal

Skyclad – A Burnt Offering For The Bone Idol (Album Review)

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Skyclad – A Burnt Offering For The Bone Idol (1992)

A Burnt Offering For The Bone Idol is a grand medieval banquet full of succulent folk, juicy classic metal and meaty thrash. Skyclad’s 1992 album was a truly original and pioneering work that built on their debut album’s idiosyncratic promise. The addition of a full-time violinist Fritha Jenkins adds class and colour to a rich and varied set of pagan metal all graced by the gifted lyrics and charismatic vocals of Martin Walkyier. The lusty jig Spinning Jenny and the fist-pumping The Declaration Of Indifference are the enduring set-list faves but every track here is special. The mix of traditional metal mastery à la Maiden and Manowar coupled with the rage and darkness of the underground made this the album to beat in a year when proper epic metal seemed to be in short-supply. From the dystopian anger of Broken Promised Land to the historical tragedy of R’Vannith and the mellow moon-lit ley lines of Ring Stone Round, A Burnt Offering… is a treasure from start to finish.

Album Reviews, Doom Metal, Genre, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal

Solstice – White Horse Hill (Album Review)

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Solstice – White Horse Hill (2018)

Unless your veins run with the blood of a coward you would do well to check out White Horse Hill, the 2018 comeback album from the UK’s Solstice. And fans of early Manowar and Candlemass should consider it essential. It’s confident, bracing stuff with riffs that power like mighty oars, harmonies that sound like they’re heading out on a quest and declamatory vocals that get the pecs swelling with pride. The folky strum of For All Days & For None is a mid-album lull and a penchant for rustic interludes hampers the pacing a touch but To Sol A Thane, Under The Waves Lie Our Dead and the title-track are glorious, bearing the weight of the album like mighty pillars.


Extra points for a beautiful digipak!
Album Reviews, Genre, Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal

Skyclad – The Wayward Sons Of Mother Earth (Album Review)

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Skyclad – The Wayward Sons Of Mother Earth (1991)

The departure of Martin Walkyier from superb UK thrashers Sabbat was a major disappointment but the talented frontman wasted no time, forming a new band Skyclad with members of Satan and Pariah. Their 1991 debut album The Wayward Sons Of Mother Earth had plenty of the Ye Olde thrash Martin was known for but innovated with its incorporation of folk elements. And lo, a new genre – folk metal – started right here.

Martin delivers his caustic rants on social justice and ecological doom with raging charisma, backed by Steve Ramsey’s powerful and deft guitar work. There are huge thrash hooks in songs like The Cradle Will Fall (I am human!) and gothic closer Terminus but the band’s dark, dense Euro thrash does get fatiguing at times and the album is at its creative best during its folkier moments. The Widdershins Jig is a jaunty highlight (with a riff surely inspired by children’s TV show The Riddlers), Moongleam and Meadowsweet is beautifully lush (with gorgeous guest guitar from Sting’s Dominic Miller) and dramatic bursts of violin liven up thrashers like Sky Beneath My Feet and Our Dying Island.

The Wayward Sons Of Mother Earth’s combination of labyrinthine thrash and pagan textures has proved remarkably durable over the years. More notable and eclectic offerings were to come, as Skyclad followed their prolific, fiddle-mad muse to become one of the most unique and influential British metal bands of the 90s. But the debut has a uniquely apocalyptic appeal that still makes it a go-to in the band’s impressive discography. Not a perfect debut but an attention-grabbing and adventurous one.

Album Reviews, Black Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal

Formicarius – Black Mass Ritual (Album Review)

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The last time I encountered the UK’s Formicarius was back in December when they contributed a track Lake of the Dead to the excellent compilation Speed Kills VII. Back then I called them “very promising” and I’m glad to report that, with Black Mass Ritual, they have delivered on that promise and then some.

Formicarius go medievil on your ass with their debut album, dishing out Cradle of Filth-style symphonic metal with power metal exuberance. The whirling atmosphere, rib-cracking riffs and exotic solos sound like Mustaine and Friedman jamming with Emperor, the potent speed metal velocity, galloping bass and catchy choruses bring to mind early Helloween and there’s a folky bent to the riffs and instrumentation that reminds me of the classic Skyclad albums.

All the performances are outstanding, from Lord Saunders’ articulate Abbath-esque croak to Morath’s grand and eloquent keyboard embellishments and solos (check out the excellent outro piano on Overlord, a standout moment). The songwriting is also uniformly excellent. An overly jaunty riff in Abhorrent Feast of Minds is the only thing close to a mis-step and it’s soon forgiven as Master of Past and Present closes the album on a dark, dramatic high.

It’s a fantastic debut: rampaging, grand black metal with a healthy dose of epic tradition and fearless creativity. In a year where I’ve been mainly knocked out by death metal albums, Formicarius have struck a decisive blow for black metal. And they’ve done it with an album that is all kinds of metal fun for all kinds of metal fans. The Black Mass Ritual begins on July 21st, don’t miss out.

Black Metal, Doom Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, Song Reviews

Primordial – Where Greater Men Have Fallen: Live (Song Review)

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“And all you did was count the dead”

Here’s a rousing track from Primordial’s new live album Gods to the Godless (Live at Bang Your Head Festival Germany 2015). I always feel like live shows are defined by the inclusion of new tracks. My memories of live performances usually revolve around the new songs that were played. For better or worse, bands seem to put extra welly into the new stuff: meaning that brilliant new songs make for an unforgettable show but weak ones will likely mar my recollections, no matter how classics-laden the show might have been. The former is definitely the case with Primordial. Four of the eleven songs here are taken from their last album Where Greater Men Have Fallen and here’s an amazing version of the title track: a burly and martial take that surpasses the studio version. Alan Nemtheanga proves himself, once again, the consummate metal frontman, and the band’s chemistry and the skill of their arrangements are even more evident in the live setting: every instrument occupying a unique space to create a massive wall of sound. Primordial, over twenty years into their career, sound like they’re determined to remain impassioned and vital until the bitter end.

[To hear the Song of the Week, click track three on the YouTube screen below. And then listen to the whole thing, you won’t regret it]

 

Album Reviews, Black Metal, Genre

Ulver – Bergtatt (Et Eeventyr i 5 Capitler) (Album Review)

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Warning: Trolls

Bergtatt, the title of Ulver’s 1995 debut, doesn’t seem to have an exact translation to English. In the album’s liner notes it’s translated as both “Spellbound” and “Mountain-taken” which is the literal translation*. It’s a Norwegian term for people (usually maidens I imagine) that have been lured into the hills by particularly alluring trolls and other assorted faerie folk, never to return! The music is appropriately seductive, alluring and magical: the album is laden with dreamy acoustic guitars, flutes and soothing Gregorian chant singing. There’s excellent, raw black metal throughout as well but, even then, the orchestrated layers of guitar don’t shatter the dreamy allure: Ulver aiming for a panoramic, classical vibe rather than the usual evil aggression. It’s a debut so fully realised that the band immediately moved on from the style but Bergtatt has proven to be inescapably influential. In 1995 this was a unique album but so many bands have followed in its dreamy, progressive footsteps since that, if it was released today, it would be more relevant than ever. It’s ageless rock n troll.

*In English the full album title is Mountain-taken: A Fairy Tale in 5 Chapters

Genre, Heavy Metal, Misc. Reviews, Thrash Metal

Skyclad – Tracks From the Wilderness (EP Review)

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What makes a great cover version? There’s only one question you have to ask: does the band covering the song make it their own? Skyclad’s cover of Thin Lizzy’s Emerald is excellent. It’s faithful to the original song but the more metallic, aggressive and threatening delivery along with the clever use of violin to handle the chorus riff and bridge ensures the song fits perfectly in Skyclad’s folk metal oeuvre. Extra points awarded for guest guitar from Lizzy’s ‘Robbo’ Robertson and the fact that this version is responsible for me getting into Thin Lizzy in the first place! Even if I (and probably you) ultimately prefer the original there is no denying this is an inspired and enjoyable cover version.

Emerald opens their 1992 EP Tracks From the Wilderness and is followed by two studio cuts that sadly don’t keep up the standard it sets. A Room Next Door is a decent ballad with beautiful, rustic acoustic guitars but When All Else Fails is forgettable thrash. Neither are in the same league as the Lizzy cover or up to the quality of the tracks on the band’s previous two albums. The lack of Fritha Jenkins’ violin on these suggests they were probably off-cuts from the band’s debut album. The EP closes out with three energetic and endearing live tracks from the Dynamo festival. The band are tight and Martin Walkyier delivers each song with zeal. These excellent performances round out a worthwhile stop-gap release but there’s no denying this is mainly worth buying for Emerald. For fans only.