Finntroll – Nifelvind (2010) Review 8.9/10

There be trolls about. Finntroll is back with another frolic through the darker parts of the Finnish forest. Nifelvind is a lot more fun than their last album, Ur Jordens Djup.

In Ur Jordens Djup, Finntroll really reached a dark point in their music. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean that their music much more diabolical and sinister. It was like a rainy day filled with necromancy. The sound is much the same in Nifelvind. It’s still dark and somewhat evil sounding, but this time it’s more darkly mischievous than sinister.  I can definitely drink ale to this.

They have introduced some new instruments on this album. I am loving the sound of the xylophone on some of the tracks. It brings to mind images of trolls dancing about in torch-lit caves. There is also some banjo on this album. I would rate this as one of the “folkier” Finntroll albums just because there are a lot of acoustic instruments and a bit less keyboard than one is used to.

As for the production and performances… The production is nearly perfect. It seems hard not to find a well produced album these days. The performances are quite good as well. The guitar is just as complicated as it needs to be. The effects and folk instruments are all well placed. I especially like the background vocals. We hear chanting and even some epic choruses.

I do prefer some of the more upbeat Finntroll albums like Nattfödd, but I am really enjoying this trip through the darker parts of the forest.

8.9/10

Line-up:
Vreth – Vocals
Routa – Guitars
Skrymer – Guitars
Tundra – Bass
Trollhorn – Keyboards
Beast Dominator – Drums

1. Vindfärd / Människopesten 05:36
2. Eliytres 03:46
3. Fiskarens Fiende 03:47
4. Trollhammaren 03:33
5. Nattfödd 04:51
6. Ursvamp 02:03
7. Marknadsvisan 02:00
8. Det Iskalla Trollblodet 03:54
9. Grottans Barn 04:37
10. Rök 02:23
Total playing time 36:30

February has Been an Epic Month

Eluveitie, Rotting Christ, Borknagar, Finntroll, Dark Tranquillity, Martriden, Burzum, Kawir, Whispered, Embryo, Shaolin Death Squad, De Profundis, Scythia, Daysend, Throes of Dawn, Jack Slater, Ov Hell, Nydvind, and Immolation have all released CD’s.

I’ll try to give you a one or two sentense preview of each one: Read more

Eluveitie – Everything Remains As It Never Was (2010) Review 9.8/10

Everything Remains As It Never Was is here! Eluveitie is playing some of their heaviest and most melodic music. After one listen I have placed this beside Spirit as my favorite Eluveitie album.

I’ll get my complaining out of the way Read more

Whispered – Thousand Swords review

Very few times have I seen a folk band that hasn’t included the now generic viking theme… slaughtering people through the Scandinavian area, traveling on boats to hidden lands, surviving the cold, we’ve all heard it before. But here is something new… a samurai folk band. Whispered is a melodic death metal/folk metal band from Finland, however, unlike most Finnish melodic death bands, they have an extremely innovative theme behind their music.

Thousand swords starts off with an atmospheric Asian intro in hajimari, it is quite an epic track, definitely something different. This preps the listener up for the following track, titled after the album, and also called Thousand Swords.  Thousand swords starts off with a very epic feel, chorus vocals and very fast guitar riffing behind it. The song lasts 7 minutes, and kept chills down my spine the whole time. The intermittent use of oriental instruments is fantastic on this track, definitely one of the best parts about this song, and the entire album.

Through most of the rest of the album, they actually kept an almost Power Metal feel in the instrumentals, however with extremely harsh vocals. These vocals are also about asian history, and samurai history, especially their fights, and honor. The instrumentals are incredibly fast, with power metal style solos, all based around the Asian oriented pentatonic scales.

Perhaps my favorite track on this album is  Blade in the Snow. It starts off with a 3 minute instrumental intro, moving onto an incredibly heart pounding and fast paced melodic death feel.This keeps up intil the last about 4 minutes of the song… let me put it this way – The last 4 minutes of this song is some of the best melodic death i have heard in the past 3 years.

I’ve listened to this album through about 3 times, and I honestly cannot find an uninventive or non-innovative track. This is my favorite folk/melodic death release of 2010, easily.

9.5/10

2010 – Best of the New Year (So Far)

2010 is getting off to one hell of a start. January was pure insanity. Here are the ones to look for (IMO):

Ihsahn – After

Mother of God. This album is amazing. Vegard Sverre Tveitan keeps getting better. Now he is on an eight string guitar and the music is just madness.

Ihsahn is Read more

FUCKING ELUVEITIE!!!!!

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=101305868

Go here now, or… lots of pain… LOTS of PAIN!

In case you are f***ing dumb and don’t know who the greatest Folk Metal band in the world is, this is them Eluveitie. This is their new single and video from their upcoming 2010 album “Everything remains (As It Never Was)”

Karlahan – A Portrait of Life (2009) Review: 10/10

Has anyone ever came up to you and said “Hey, wanna listen to some epicly symphonic thrashing melodic blackened orchestral folk-ish death metal?”. Well, with Karlahan, that is indeed the band that was used in the scenario mentioned.

Karlahan is a fairly new band being formed in 2006, and their debut album “A Portrait of Life” came to my eyes over at the Northern Warriors blog, and I decided to look into their music a little further. I had only seen a few comments saying that this album was perfect and great and so on, so I decided to see what made this so great… After hearing it, I decided it needed a proper review, ASAP.

The first line on the CD for the opening symphonic track was “The sounds you are about to experience were designed specifically to create a feeling of euphoria.” Now of course my first thought was that it would probably be a sort of lackluster slow paced opening intro… I was wrong. I closed my eyes about thirty seconds of the way in and just felt plain relaxed and limp in my chair, it was possibly one of the greatest symphonic pieces I have ever heard in my entire life. It made me wonder why this band had never come to my attention long before I found out about this album.

As the opening closed and it came on to the second track, all that energy I built up from relaxing turned into a big ass grin at the sound this band had. It wasn’t exactly pure black metal, thrash, symphonic, or anything of the sort. They incorporated a whole array of different styles in this CD. Not just the CD, but just a SONG. From trippy haunting solos that at the same time blend into the atmosphere and mix with everything else perfectly. Throughout the entire CD, Karlahan show true versatility working with different styles and sounds and bringing them together to create possibly some of the greatest metal ever made. (Purely opinion on that one, but DAMN it’s good.)

The men behind all of this great music is full of names you may not know now, but certainly enough in time you will. The line up right now consists of :

Toni Gonzalez – Vocals
Guillem Rejon – Guitar and Vocals
Jordi Bolibar – Guitar and Backing Vocals
Sergi Nuez – Bass
Aleix Valverde – Drums and Backing Vocals

I would say this album is probably one of the greatest listens I’ve had in a long while and I will be looking forward to their next album, and I wish the best to the band, hoping they get all the credit they deserve for this wonderful album. Normally I don’t really take people seriously when something is rated like this, but I really am seriously about to give this album a 10/10. This is a great show of talent and musicianship from a new band.

10/10

Klabautamann

Genre(s)

Black Metal, Folk Black Metal

Location

Germany Read more

Ensiferum – From Afar (2009) Audio Review: 8.9/10

8.9/10

If you haven’t heard Ensiferum you have probably been listening to too much American radio metal. These guys are the real deal from Finland. Their forth and latest studio album, From Afar, is one hell of a piece of music.

Ensiferum plays epic viking metal with folk elements. I really like the dynamics these guys put into their music. One minute the guitars are soaring and the vocals are in full assault, the next we are treated to an acoustic assortment filled with mandolins, guitars, and even a piano.

There are both harsh and clean vocals on this (and the other) album. The harsh vocals are now performed by Norther front-man, Petri Lindroos. I always preferred Jari Mäenpää. He who did the on the first two albums before moving to his new project, Wintersun. He sounds more like a viking to me. Lindroos has an amazing scream. It’s clean and full, just not as savage as Mäenpää.

I highly recommend this for any fans of epic metal, viking metel, and folk metal. It also works for fans of Wintersun, Norther, and Turisas.

Check out the audio review for a little more info and some music samples.

[podcast]http://keepitmetal.com/audio/0001_ensiferum-from afar-KeepItMetalRevlew.mp3[/podcast]

Keep it Metal User Manual

Here is how this place works (I am tired so this is gonna be messy).

Most of the site is controlled through he black bar across the top. You can register, edit your profile, and compose blogs here. Be sure to fill our your profile, upload an avatar, and click around a bit.

If you want to write a blog, review, article, etc. there are rules.

• If it’s not about metal it doesn’t go on the main page. You can discuss it in the forum.
• Use tags!
• Users are not allowed to use the “Keep it Metal” categories (“Official News/ Blog” and Official Review”). Those categories are not for the community.
• Use any other categories that apply.
• If you want your article to show on the main page be sure to select the “Community” category.

Comments and blogs are synced to the forum. If you like the forum better you can just live there.

Rules:

• No trolling. This is not gameriot. I will ban. If you want to be funny, play the pic war.
• No porn, no illegal stuff (links to torrents, etc.)
• If you don’t have anything to say, don’t. We don’t needs posts that say, “stfu,” and nothing else.
• No alternate accounts.
• No threats.
• Sig may be 800px x 120px, no larger.
• Keep It Metal

If you want your avatar to show up in the forum you have to actually go into the forum and edit your profile. You will need to copy the image location from your avatar on the wordpress site and paste it into your profile on the forum. It’s kinda stupid and we will fix this soon.

If you want to create a wiki article you need to write a normal blog article and then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. You will see options to turn your post into a wiki page. If your post is a wiki page the h2 tags will be headers in the table of contents and the h3 will be sub-headers.

Now… let me know if there are bugs.

Windir

Windir Photos

Genre(s)

Black Metal, Melodic Black Metal, Viking Metal, Folk Metal

Members

• Terje “Valfar” Bakken – Vocals, Accordion (Formerly also Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, up to “Arntor”) (R.I.P. January 14, 2004)
• Jørn “Steingrim” Holen – Drums (1994-2004) (Vreid, Cor Scorpii, Ulcus)
• Stian “Strom” Bakketeig – Guitar (2001-2004) (Cor Scorpii, Ulcus, Mistur)
• Sture Dingsøyr – Guitar (also Vocals on “SognaMetal”) (2001-2004) (Vreid, Ulcus, Finnugor)
• Jarle “Hvà ll” KvÃ¥le – Bass (2001-2004) (Vreid, Ulcus)
• Gaute “Righ” Refsnes – Keyboards (2001-2004) (Cor Scorpii, Ulcus)

Lyrical Theme(s)

History, Vikings, War, Misanthropy, Myths

Samples (Videos)