Reviewed – 02/01/06

Turis Fratyr
[Black Attakk Records]

There has been a serious draught of Folk, Pagan and Viking Metal coming out of Germany lately. Five or so years go, the country seemed ripe with excellent bands in these genres that between them all managed to release an excellent album every few months. That's not so any more as Russia and its former satellite countries have pulled ahead of Germany and all three Scandinavian countries in terms of the sheer numbers of quality Follk, Viking and Pagan Metal bands. Don't fret though, the Germans have finally given us another new band too keep us happy until some more new ones are born. This band is the mighty Equilibrium, and their newest album "Turis Fratyr" is one fine piece of work, to say the least.

Now let me get this out of the way first. Being a fan of Folk, Viking and Pagan Metal, I own hundreds of releases in these genres. I actually collect anything in these genres I can find. You can say it's a hobby of mine. Anyway, with having bought and listened to so much of these styles of music, I run into bands quite often that don't offer any originality. Equilibrium is one of these bands. They offer nothing new to me with their sound and their music is a mix of a few other band's sounds, but you know what? I wouldn't change a thing! You won't hear me saying this often, but while Equilibrium do have obvious influences from a few other bands out there, I don't care because it sounds so great and I honestly couldn't imagine their music played any other way. The music on "Turis Fratyr" is a bit epic and melodic Black Metal mixed with a whole lot of Folk and Viking Metal. If Moonsorrow and Finntroll's music were combined with the music from the first Ensiferum album and the older Suidakra albums, you would probably get something very similar to the music on this debut Equilibrium album. The music has this fast galloping style that I loved about the first Suidakra albums, and it has the epic Folkiness of the Moonsorrow and Finntroll albums. Hell, the synth even at times has this simulated accordion sound similar to what Finntroll uses! As for the band's musical abilities, I have no gripe at all about that. The standout musician in my opinion is drummer Julius Koblitzek, who apparently was just a guest musician for this album and has recently been replaced by Markus Perschke. It's hard for a lot of Folk/Viking Metal drummers to get a regular drum kit to sound even the least bit Folky... the drummer for Korpiklaani can do it along with only a select a few others, so I was surprised and elated to hear that Juilius accomplished this too. I wonder what band he;s playing for now that Equilibrium has a new full time drummer? The guitarist and synth player Andreas Volki is also an outstanding musician. The Folky melodies he created and plays along with second guitarist Rene are out of this world, as are the many dual leads they both play on the C.D. that weave in and around eachother and over top of one another, all the while the guitars never clashing or sounding dissonant. Andreas also plays the hell out of the sytnth! He honestly cold give Mirai a run for his money as Julius plays with a speed and precision I've rarely witnesses in any form of music. I didn't know human fingers could move that fast! A majority of the time his synth work is Folk styled, but from time to time the synths take on a Fantasy vibe, as well as even sounding like an accordion here and there as I mentioned above. I swear that on the excellent song "Met" what is playing is a real accordion and not a synth, but I could be wrong. Just as I would swear that there's a real flute playing on the last track on the album, but I'm again probably wrong. It just goes to show how great he is at recreating those traditional instrument's sounds with his synth. The bassist, Sandra, is a female with the same last name that Andreas has, so I'm assuming they're married or they may be related in some other way. She is equally impressive and would make Bolt Thrower fans out there realize that Jo Bench is not the best female bassist in all of Metaldom! "Turis Fratyr" also contains some nice sound samples throughout its duration of birds singing, fires roaring and crows cawing to help out with the atmosphere of their music.

The lyrics are written and sung in German, so I have no clue as to what the lyrical content is about. I saw on some message board a few days ago that a lot of their lyrics have to do with Scandinavia, though I can't confirm that. Vocalist Helge Stang has the perfect voice for Equilibrium's music. An excellent combination of Black and Death styled vocals mixed with some Folk inspired singing, he just sounds great! Though used very sparingly on the album, you will find a few female vocal parts sung by guest musician Gaby Koss of Haggard.

The production and mixing job on this album is as if they paid a ton of money for studio time. Not being a fan of low-fi Metal at all, I love the sound some bands strive for and achieve like Equilibrium did for this album. To me, a production like this should be a given for almost any band, but this just isn't the case. It's nice to see, and more importantly hear, that the band released the best sounding album they possibly could!

The album cover art for "Turis Fratyr" is simply amazing and eye-catching! The whole thing is deep and brilliantly colored and painted with a lot of detail. I just got done playing the video game Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2, and the leaves on this album cover look just like the ones adorning the threes in the game. Anyway, the leaves from a tree surround most of the album's cover on three sides and on the bottom there's some stonework that has the Equilibrium logo. The leaves and stonework act like some sort of window that looks out onto a vast landscape that has a castle sitting in the middle. It's very well done by Mathias Huber, and I really hope I see more of this person's art in the future! All of the lyrics are printed within the booklet and there's also a photo of each band member as well as a group photo of the band taken after a show they did in 2004 in Munich. I also really like how they did the C.D. tray. It's a larger image of the stonework that's on the front cover, only here it's blown up to show the band logo more. They positioned the little sun-god icon right in the middle where you snap the C.D. into place. So even with the C.D. in the tray, the sun-god icon is staring back at you.

Yes, the Germans are back into he fold once more, my friends. If you're into Folk or Viking Metal at all, "Turis Fratyr" is a definite must have! They may not have tons of originality, but they do what they do extremely well and I hope they can manage to do just as well on their next album!