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

Doozr's Top 10 of 2010

It's December again, and so it must be nearly time for yet another best-of list. I already made a list of my top 5 from the first half of the year back in July. Do my decisions still stand? Has enough awesome music been released lately to knock some of those five off the list?

While I chose my top five, I also included five that didn't quite make the grade. These were fine albums, but fell by the wayside to make way for the top five. Since making that list, my horizons have broadened, my collection has grown and my ears have been treated to a vast array of new musical morsels.

Picking the top ten has been tricky. I've had to base my decisions on initial impact, longevity and how much I just randomly decide to play it. So without further ado, in no particular order, here is my top 10 of 2010.

Crystalic - Persistence

What to say that I haven't already said? This album was released for free due to lack of label interest, which is a travesty because it's awesome.

Ghost Brigade - Isolation Songs

A Last.fm recommendation come good. Death metal with a hint of black metal who happen to also be great live.

The Hoosiers - The Illusion Of Safety

It's cheesy, it's retro, it's silly and it's good. Enough said.

Pain Of Salvation - Road Salt One

Sometimes I listen to an album, and it's good. Sometimes, it's amazing. And just sometimes an album comes along that completely takes me by surprise at it's sheer brilliance. Road Salt One is one such album.

Dark Tranquillity - We Are The Void

One of the first albums I got in 2010, and still one of the best. Loved it from the very first time I saw the teaser video for Shadow In Our Blood.

Volbeat - Beyond Heaven / Above Hell

Part rock 'n' roll, part metal, part blues and part country. Quite a mix, but brilliant.

Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here

A wistful, contemplative, yet cheerful melancholy. The sort you might feel on a quiet summer's eve when the world is at peace, and everything, just for that moment, is okay.

Dimmu Borgir - Abrahadabra

A magnificent conglomeration of orchestra and black metal. Think Lord Of The Rings crossed with the more classically inspired bits of Nightwish. An album that is both exciting and satisfying to listen to.

Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit

An album rich with images of life and light being torn down by the heavy, unbearable weight of the physical and metaphorical winter. Dreamy, sombre black/folk metal at its best.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

A great third album, all the better having seen it played live. Nostalgia and melancholy about the ways and whys of childhood, growing up in a rapidly changing world.

Sadly not all the great albums from 2010 can go into the top 10. Well, unless there were only 10 of them. But there aren't. There are loads. Here are some of the runners up.

Northern Oak - Monuments Finely crafted folk/black metal from Sheffield's finest purveyors of black metal and waistcoats. (review coming soon)

The Birthday Massacre - Pins & Needles Great dark synth-rock and an obsession with purple bunnies. (review)

Mostly Autumn - Go Well, Diamond Heart The first album with their new lead vocalist, and a good start it is, too. (review)

Martriden - Encounter The Monolith An album that has got me through many a torturous train journey. Just great music. (review)

Disturbed - Asylum Loud and brash American heavy metal. (review)

Dream Theater - Octavarium Twiddly, complicated and totally prog.

Engines Of Armageddon - Self-titled A hella-tight Thrash/Power/Doom/Groove METAL BAND from Nottingham UK.

Courteeners - Falcon A bit of chavvy pop. A guilty pleasure. (review)

65DaysOfStatic - We Were Exploding Anyway An altogether more dance oriented album from the band who brought you the soundtrack to the end of the world. (review)

Tarot - Gravity Of Light It's metal. It's heavy. It's got Marco Hietala in it. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? (review)

Dimmu Borgir - Abrahadabra

Following a recent trend of trying a bit of commercial metal to see if it's any good, I've recently been listening to Dimmu Borgir's latest opus, the obscurely spelled Abrahadabra. Originating from Aleister Crowley's The Book Of The Law, Abrahadabra loosely translates as "I will create as I speak".

I've actually seen Dimmu Borgir live at Bloodstock Open Air 2008 and didn't reckon much to it, but this new album piqued my interest. The band is missing a couple of members, down to three from five. After a bit of a shake up two long standing members, ICS Vortex and Mustis, were dismissed. This has left the remaining members free to create this orchestral masterpiece.

And a masterpiece it is. When thinking about commercial metal I usually think about nu metal, hardcore and "pop" metal. Take the musical styles that identify metal but put them to use in bland, repetitive songs. But the label is Nuclear Blast, home of some of my other favourites including Nightwish, Sirenia and even Amorphis. With the way people cry foul against Dimmu Borgir I thought they must have signed with Sony on a million dollar pop contract.

This album does not sound "commercial". The 100 piece Norwegian Radio Orchestra (Kringkastingsorkestret) provide the epic classical movements while the band provide the melody, metal and vocal for the songs. Right from the opening orchestral track I had visions of the icey vistas portrayed by the band's stage gear. Think Lord Of The Rings crossed with the more classically inspired bits of Nightwish.

It's not all classical, of course. The melody and lyrics are harsh and grunting, even using animal sounds to enhance the already complex and layered production. In parts hard, heavy black metal, and in parts sounding more like choral chants, this is a very complex record.

Lyrically it's sometimes clunky (the rhyming scheme in Born Treacherous being amusingly simplistic), but one advantage of having the commercial success and backing that Dimmu Borgir have enjoyed is the ability to really polish the final production. The production values on this record are incredibly high and the mixing and arrangement does every song justice. The hissing, grating vocal fits right in and as individual lyrics catch the ear the mood of the song comes across.

Perhaps the album's high point comes in the eponymous track Dimmu Borgir. Presumably using the Icelandic or Old Norse translation of "Dark Castles", this is a war song, much like many of the others on the album. Orchestral and choral elements combine with chants and the drums of war. Heavy guitar riffs and an up-tempo melody make for a song epic in scale.

I was surprised by this album. Instead of cheesy pop metal, I heard epic, complex symphonic black metal. The scale is grand, the riffs are strong and the soaring orchestral arrangement adds to the imagery to make an album that is both exciting and satisfying to listen to.