ILDRA - Eoelland Re-issue Heidens Hart Records As we all know, popular music goes through trends and metal is not free of all of that. A decade ago extreme metal had a few legitimate trends going on. I say legitimate because the hipster crap a joke and not worthy. But yeah ten years ago you had the thrash revival petering out. Old school death metal was making a come back and is still going strong today. You also had the rise of bands into pagan folk metal. These were bands who were influenced by the olden days, especially of their native lands or, in certain circumstances, wishful thinking. The hokey terms were battle metal or viking metal. Some act were truly into their nation's folk music heritage and used it into their sound. And of course there were the true pagan folk acts who had more of a black metal heritage. This is where ILDRA comes in. When I saw their name in the promo email I thought I recognized it. I've said it many times yes I am a fan of the whole pagan folk metal genre. I got hooked on it a decade ago when it was a trend. Of course I was already listening to bands playing that style of music prior to learning wow it's called pagan folk metal. Hell for years I just called it great music. Thank you unknown person who came up with a genre term. But anyways I went into the SFM666 archives to see if I had written about ILDRA before and the answer was no. I've got stacks of CDs on the shelf by pagan, folk, viking, battle metal bands and here's one I missed out on originally. ILDRA's Eoelland originally came out in the Spring of 2011. It was their only full length release. Prior to it the band/artist (no one really knows other than they're/he's English) had a few demos starting out in 2004. So let's be clear they were not trendy. When I listen to this now my first thought is wow a lot of people followed along this band's pagan folk style. There's a huge amount of acoustic guitar usage. Theirs definitely some viking era Quorthon influence here. Basically post Hammerheart is what I'm referring to as well as the use of sound effects (aka: sounds of clashing battles and crashing waves). On a whole Eoelland reminds me of GRAVELAND's latter work. I'm talking about when Rob Darken (who by the way was never into the shit he's been accused of by the pc police) went from straight up black metal to more pagan folk style. Musically everything is on the melodic scale with plenty of epicness as well as blackened room to breath. The whole release is slightly less then an hour of tremendous pagan folk music that will capture the true believers. http://www.heidenshart.nl/ https://heidenshart.bandcamp.com/album/e-elland
VERIKALPA - Taistelutahto Inverse Records Around ten years ago I was all into the Pagan Folk Viking metal genre trend that was going on. Yes I attended two Pagan Fest shows, saw a lot of other gigs with bands doing the whole pagan/folk metal thing. I bought a lot of CDs and am still a huge fan of the music mainly because it was an education.
Obviously the whole idea of incorporating a nation's traditional folk music into a metal framework is cool. But to me it's the fun aspect to the music. VERIKALPA, who hail from Finland, have all the cool trappings I've mentioned. Musically they fit in between KORPIKLAANI and FINNTROLL, two bands also from Finland who I'm a huge fan of. VERIKALPA is a self described Troll & Beer metal band. Now you can understand why I placed them where I did. Taistelutahto is the band's debut full length tossing out ten cuts which are all energetic, aggressive and of course fun. By the way that's gotta be an accordion I hear. The band sings in their native tongue which in the past I've said it makes German sound polite. Any ways VERIKALPA do inject some new found fire into a genre that needs it. Especially since both bands I mentioned where this band sits in between have really gotten boring. https://www.inverse.fi/ https://www.facebook.com/inverserecords/ https://www.facebook.com/Verikalpa
ASHAENA - Calea Loud Rage Music I got into the whole pagan/folk metal genre years ago to the point of being obsessive and I'm glad I did. While at the time plenty of people in the music media were making jokes about it. I ignored em and, thanks to devoted fans in the alternative music media, discovered some truly great music from Europe and elsewhere. After a few years the media stopped laughing and now cover it with respect. So I'm always on the lookout for bands in that genre from different countries I have never heard anything from. ASHAENA from Romania fits that bill. The pagan/folk metal genre is not as ridged as some believe it to be. There are various styles employed by bands from across the spectrum, some more orthodox than others. ASHAENA stands closer to the orthodox side of the genre in that they bring in lot of traditional folk instrumentation to their songs. Also their music is influenced by Romanian mythology, folklore and history. Bands that dedicate their music to keeping alive old traditions are my favorite of the whole pagan/folk metal genre. Calea is the band's second full length and it's been a good six years since their last one. There are so many cool things going on here musically. The first obvious point to make is how ASHAENA incorporates different metal styles into their overall sound whether it's melodic death, traditional metal and of course some blackened touches. Vocals are sung in both harsh/guttural and clean sounding. Strangely enough the vocals take a back seat to the instrumentation on most of this. All in all a fine release. Rating: 5/5
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In Jan. 2020 some not so nice person(s), who obviously don't care for Metal, decided to complain to a social media platform about something I posted. That got me banned from posting links there under the former blog title Scumfeast Metal 666. Fine I just changed the name to what you see now. Hey I'm still here and, under our present day situation, will be more extreme then before.
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Extreme Metal or Music is generally a form which is accepted by 1% of all of the music loving public. It is elitist in every way and that's important to those of us who call ourselves fans. The 99% of people who will not like it are Not Supposed To. The music wasn't made for them, "the masses". It's music that's for those who take things to that "other" level. There is nothing hip or fad about it. In fact I treat those two notions very harshly.
