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

Whispered – Thousand Swords review