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posts about folk metal.

while browsing around my back then favourite music store, the guy working there tried to sell me an album by negură bunget called om, which was supposed to sound “similar to moonsorrow”. well, that’s kind of a strong statement, but there is a bit of truth in it. but the main thing is, this made me experience a great band i haven’t heard of before. negură bunget is a romanian experimental black metal band. let me start with the first full song from the om album. this song is a beautiful stream of heavy guitarwork, great riffs, a awesome intertwine of almost spherical music with sounds of nature and black metal. i just love this.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the second song is the second to last song from the om album. beginning with 22 seconds of black metal, it evolves into a folk/ambient song, which eventually starts to get heavy again. a really crazy song.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the third song is the first part of the ‘n crugu bradului album, a concept album containing four songs about the four seasons. this song is about spring (and unfortunately, the youtube version is crippled; the beginning is chopped of by over two minutes :-( ). this song is, as is the whole album, very experimental, dark, technical, diversified.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

unfortunately, two of the three band members left negură bunget in 2009 after some “differences”, and the remaining member found some new bandmates to continue the band. since the two members who left were responsible for many parts of the unique music of negură bunget, i consider the new lineup as a different band. maybe i’ll write something about them in the future…

moonsorrow is a finnish pagan metal band. i first saw them easter 2007 in the z-7, which was also the first time i heard anything from them. going there was a good idea, in fact i liked moonsorrow so much that it almost instantly got one of my most favourite bands. (i also mentioned them several times on spielwiese.) using elements from folk and black metal, they produced a variety of different, but almost always very good songs. the first song i want to present is pakanajuhla from their 2001 suden uni (wolf’s dream) album; it is a good example of moonsorrow‘s more folkish sound:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the second song i wanted to present is the balad sankaritarina from the 2001 voimasta ja kunniasta album. unfortunately it cannot be embedded, whence you have to listen to it here.

the next song is from their 2003 kivenkantaja (stone bearer) album. its a mostly instrumental piece, only featuring some heavy parts. a real beauty.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the last song is karhunkynsi from their 2005 verisäkeetalbum. this was one of the first of their albums i owned, and especially this song, which is the opener of the album, made me want more. its a beautiful mix of folk and metal, and finally ends with a black metal thunderstorm. a true masterpiece.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

after verisäkeet, they released their album viides lukiu: hävitetty in 2007. it consists of two songs, each having around 30 minutes. its a fantastic album, and i already raved about it here. since its hard to rip something out of this album, i won’t embed a sample here. go listen to it completely. there’s also another album coming up, varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa to be released tomorrow (or a few days later, depending on where you live). i’m really looking forward to that one…

the finnish band finntroll is a more popular choice than most bands i presented so far, except lacuna coil. finntroll‘s lyrics are troll-centered. not internet trolls or fantasy trolls though, but the skandinavian ones. for that reason, they also sing in swedish, because it sounds more trollish than finnish or english. they tell tales about trolls, including their wars against christian missionaries. the music comes from the melodic black metal genre, with some humppa (sometimes described as finnish polka) influcences. most of them feature fast melodic heavy music with screamed/growled lyrics. the band also makes use of orchestric parts and is well suited as party music or to dance to it (well, i guess it depends on what you mean by dancing). one good example is vindfärd/människopesten from their 2003 album nadfödd:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

another example is from their newest album, nifelvind:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

a third song i want to present is relatively calm, compared to the above two. it’s from their ur jordens djup album, and very danceable:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

finally, here’s a rather different piece from their 2003 album visor om slutet, an album i already raved about on spielwiese (in fact, that was my first post there after the obligatory hello world post). the album is purely accoustic and often also instrumental. this is a nice piece with vocals:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

in case you like something atmospheric, folkish, try that album. it’s not typical for finntroll, but nonetheless great!

agalloch is another band i stumbled about while browsing my favourite record store in zurich. during their existence, they produced four full-length albums ranging over different styles. i particularly like the latter three: the mantle, ashes against the grain and marrow of the spirit.

unfortunately, all songs from the mantle are only playable on youtube for certain regions (in which i’m not living apparently). there are a couple of live recordings available, but i prefer the studio versions, especially when listening to the songs the first time. in case you can find them somewhere, the lodge and the hawthorne passage (featuring a quote from det sjunde inseglet) are two very good songs on that album. it is unfortunate that i can’t include these songs here since they are rather different, compared to the songs i present below.

from the album ashes against the grain, some songs are available on youtube, for example not unlike the waves, a dark, atmospheric and heavy song with both clear vocals and distorted screaming:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

another song i really like from that album is the opener limbs. the second song i want to present is from their newest album marrow of the spirit, released november 2010. it is called black lake nidstång and has a duration of over 17 minutes. it’s my favourite piece from that album, and not that easy to digest.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]
[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

update: someone uploaded the complete song together with a very nice photo show:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

finally, here’s another piece from marrow of the spirit, called to drown. the first half is rather calm, while the second is more and more dramatic, until the music evolves into noise and finally into sounds of water, sounds of waves.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

kauan is a band from russia, whose lyrics are in finnish and russian. starting as a folk/doom metal band, they continuously changed their style and now fit into the post rock category. i randomly stumbled about one of their albums on amazon, since for some reason one of their album was wrongly labelled as an album by mar de grises. i liked the songs i tried on youtube, especially orkidea from their second album tietäjän laulu. orkidea is a rather calm song, with heavy guitars only appearing seldomly:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

another very beautiful piece is valveuni from their newest album, aava tuulen maa. beautiful melodies and soundscapes await the listener:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

finally, here’s a piece from the first album lumikuuro, showing the darker, doomier side of the band’s past. opposed to the above two songs, this one contains growls:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]