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

Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit

Winter is upon us once more, and the world has taken on a grim blankness that chills the soul and tires the spirit. Agalloch's latest release, Marrow of the Spirit, is a fitting album for these bleak and dreary times. Continuing the black folk metal style of their preceding 3 albums, Marrow captures the sleepy, dreamlike quiet of winter.

The album opener, They Escaped The Weight Of Darkness, is a forlorn, sombre folk instrumental. A lone cello over a backdrop of rippling water and birdsong laments the onset of winter. A slow and saddening start to the album but one that captures the mood of the piece.

The segue to the next track, Into The Painted Grey, is a thundering drum intro with an intricately detailed black metal guitar riff. The song seems to be about the lost majesty of an extinct volcano; once a Pagan god of power and fire, now sleeping in an icey shroud of cloud and snow. The quiet rasping of the vocal over the ever-building melody and thundering drum has a soporific, yet disquieting quality.

The album continues in this vein, drawing on Pagan mythology for it's imagery, yet maintaining the overarching theme of decay, loneliness and a forgotten past. From runic monoliths, cursing sticks (or Nidstång) and ghosts in the fires burning in the mid-winter night. The album is rich with images of life and light being torn down by the heavy, unbearable weight of the physical and metaphorical winter.

The folk melody and darker riffs combine to capture the listener and to impress the gravity of the songwriting on them. All tracks were recorded on vintage analogue equipment which adds to the soft, earthy feel of the instruments and the results are an album that is very easy to listen to, or to simply put on and allow to wash over you.

Northern Oak Charity Gig - Corporation, 13th Feb 2010

Sheffield based folk metal collective Northern Oak played the Corporation, Sheffield's premier dank, smelly dive, for a charity gig supporting the British Heart Foundation last Saturday night. Always up for supporting local talent, 23inertia and I donned our blackest clothes and headed out for an evening of metal with tanzeelat, our resident metal guru. And for 3 quid, why not?

Northern Oak were not alone in this bit of charity. Nottingham based doom/groove/stoner/sludge metal band The Engines Of Armageddon played a set, as well as Sheffield's own Viperous, an extreme metal assortment of misfits.

After the obligatory swift half in the Devonshire Cat, we arrived at the gig just in time to see The Engines Of Argmageddon finish up their set. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I get the impression they're really not big fans of RFID chips. It's all just a bit too subtle for me.

Viperous were up next. Well, they certainly made a noise. Much retreating to the smoking area took place and eardrums were abused, but the band seemed to have a good time. Some people seemed to like it, but it wasn't our cup of tea.

Finally Northern Oak, the band we'd actually gone to see, took to the stage and played a peculiar variety of growly folky metal. Not at all unpleasant, although 23inertia, not being a fan of the cookie monster vocal, preferred the musical interludes. And pleasing they were.

Sporting an uncanny resemblance to Rory Bremner doing an impression of Tony Blair, but thankfully not sounding anything like, frontman Martin Collins guided us through the set. And what more can you expect from Sheffield's finest purveyors of folk metal and waistcoats than, well, exactly that. Verging toward a black metal style, but (thankfully) with none of the obnoxious attitude problems, the band seemed like a genuinely lovely bunch of people. Which is good, because it makes them easier to support.

I picked up the new self-titled demo for a pound (hand numbered 10 of 20, so there!) so I'll give it a listen and see if it takes my fancy. It's not quite the strident, intricate wall of sound used by other folk metal bands like Eluveite, and has the distinct tone of a small local band finding their way in the world. Definitely more folky than metal, with the strained grunting of Mr. Collins nicely contrasting the airy flute melody.

Quite a pleasant evening, all told, and I got a demo CD and a t-shirt out of it. Tanzeelat got The Engines Of Armageddon t-shirt and CD deal, too, so we can listen to them a bit and see what other political statements they can make using only F-bombs. And of course, the Dev Cat was the only possible port of call after the gig finished.