Sunday, March 11, 2012

Svafnir - The heathen chapters


Genre : Folk black metal / Neofolk

Genius and magnificience. The heathen chapters is not strict folk black metal. Instead, it's almost a whole neofolk release. And what a neofolk my friends, this is perfectly executed, rich and deep. As opposed to many neofolk bands, vocals, even if they're a minor part, are not a letdown at all, here being melancholic and perfectly executed. Folk black only appears in a couple parts from time to time. It's quite impressive to notice that it's just as good as the neofolk parts. Riffs are impressive, catchy, some chords have an unexpected old-school hard rock feel, and the result of those harsh parts is a really positive, enjoyable, quite enlightened folk black metal, especially since the folk guitars often stay alongside distorted ones, keeping this feeling of nature and beauty anytime. Some other unexpected things sometimes surface, such as a melancholic distorted guitar solo on top of a full neofolk song. Well, this album is something without musical limits or restrictions, it's just pure artistic expression, and you've got to check it out, because it would be far too long to express everything that lies between those deep musical layers.

Two songs only, that's what I said? Well, check out Zweige sich im Winde wiegen and Death of the sun, which should be good examples of the various musical sides of this release. Then check the whole album.

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