Season of Riffs and Black Metal Folkiness

Winter holds a mystique all its own. The darkness creeps into all aspects of life, the cold biting and drawing the warmth out of every living thing. There is an almost palpable menace in the air, and tales of winters long past hang heavy with fear and foreboding. Pagan ritual and ancient folklore anthropomorphise this sinister essence and give it an almost spiritual quality.

Perhaps, then, this begins to explain the draw of black and folk metal at this time of year. More sombre, more haunting than folk music, and yet less raging than other forms of extreme metal. A genre that fits the mood of this frigid, disquieting season.

Over the last week I have had the pleasure of listening to several albums that capture the atmosphere of bleak and desolate winter cold. One of these that I recently reviewed, the stunning Marrow Of The Spirit from Agalloch, is perhaps the quintessential winter metal album. With heart-rending melodies and chilling vocals, it embodies the very heart of a winter dense with legends, ghosts and mythology.

Another recently reviewed album, Abrahadabra from Dimmu Borgir, is a very different sort of beast. Soaring orchestral scores punctuated by hard hitting black metal and rasping, eerie vocals. Where Marrow Of The Spirit captures the claustrophobia of winter snows, Abrahadabra covers vast landscapes, epic vistas and an angrier, more direct threat.

The most recent addition to my collection of black folk metal is Monuments, the new album from Northern Oak. While not capturing the essence of winter within the album itself, it is nonetheless an album heavy in folklore and emotion. A full review will follow, but for now suffice to say that it is easy to soak up this album and get lost in it, or to read carefully into the lyrics and follow the stories told within.

Last comes Eluveitie, who were the first folk metal band to catch my attention. Using traditional folk instruments mixed with melodic death metal, combining that with Gaulish vocals and Celtic themes, this is perhaps the most widely varied and complex folk metal band in this list. Their 2010 album Everything Remains (As It Never Was) continues this theme with evocative whispered passages among death metal riffs and intricate folk melodies.

Perhaps it is the weight of the air, the cold's constant nipping or simply the almost perpetual dark, but at this time of year I feel a certain morose wistfulness. Black and folk metal plays on that emotion and turns it into something beautiful. Something I can lose myself in, and let the music carry me away.


* With apologies to John Keats