Reviewed – 02/12/06
Heralding the Fireblade
[Napalm Records]
Well, we had to wait over two years for a new Falkenbach album, but it's finally here! Sort of! Falkenbach's newest album "Heralding The Fireblade" actually consists of re-recorded and updated versions of older songs that were never released. The songs off of "Heralding The Fireblade" were written and I believe partially recorded long ago. These tracks were supposed to be the band's debut album, but due to bad sound and recording equipment, I guess Vratyas Vakyas decided to pull the plug on this instead of releasing a bad sounding debut album. I agree with him on that decision! Who wants a terrible sounding debut album?
The music on this new album has two sides. One side is raw and unrelenting Black Metal, the other is epic Viking/Folk Metal. The raw Black Metal tracks are quite a surprise coming from Falkenbach. They've always had a bit of a raw Blackened sound at times, but never this raw and Blackened! These rawer tracks are done well though, and still have a ton of atmosphere surrounding them. Judging from these songs, I'm thinking that Falkenbach must have had a bit more of a Black Metal sound during the band's formative years. The Viking/Folk stuff is excellent as well, and naturally I like these tracks the best. Some people that heard the album before I did said this album wasn't as Folk oriented as their earlier albums. I beg to differ as the Folk flavored tracks are still extremely Folky, monumental, and epic and proud sounding. In fact, this album is actually the first Falkenbach album to use a violin and not rely totally on the synth like the previous albums did. The album kind of plays out in an alternating style, meaning that there's a raw Black Metal track, then a Viking/Folk Metal track, etc. The musicianship and songwriting ability of the band is excellent, as always. Back in the band's early days I believe Vratyas did everything on the first two albums himself (or he may have had help from one other person). While I loved those albums, I thought the band started to really excel at what they did with their 2003 album "Ok Nefna Tysvar Ty" when Vartyas brought together a full band lineup under his leadership. On "Heralding The Fireblade", we see all of the same musicians from the last album show up once again. Vratyas does an excellent job on creating and playing the guitar melodies as well as those great keyboard passages that Falkenbach is famous for. Second guitarist Hagalaz has proven to be an accomplished guitarist, and you'll hear this for yourself when you listen to his amazing acoustic guitar work on this album! Trollhorn, Falkenbach's drummer, is perfect for this band as he can belt out Black Metal blast beats as well as sound Folky as hell by playing various percussion instruments. Vratyas formed himself one hell of a band here, and I hope he keeps this lineup for quite a while.
Vratyas has had a clean "Folk" vocal style that he's used since the band's debut album that I've always really liked. It's super clean sounding and filled with emotion - and nothing sounds better than that, my friends. At times on this new album there'll be some choir styled vocals that sound like they come from the halls of Valhalla. These choir parts are actually made up of three or four of Vratyas' vocals tracks laid over top of one another. It's all him! Very cool, indeed. Second vocalist Tyrann returns for the recording of "Heralding The Fireblade" to add his raw Black Metal and Spoken Word vocal talents to the album, and this time around we even are witness to a few female vocals on the track "Skirnir". The lyrics are all written and sung in English, and the lyrical themes are mainly about Norse Mythology, Heathenism, nature, and battles.
The production on "Heralding The Fireblade" is actually a bit better than "Ok Nefna Tysvar Ty", and the production on that was perfect! Seeing as how the band has mixed raw Black Metal and the more epic stuff more than ever before on this album, it's quite respectable that they pulled it off so well.
The packaging and layout of the digipak version of the C.D. I got is one of the best of the year! The actual official album cover art which is used as the cover of the jewel case version as well as the cover of the lyric book of the digipak version, is very similar at first glance to the cover art for the last album. This cover shows the sun trying to peek out through a stormcloud filled sky at twilight. If you weren't paying attention, you'd mistake it for the cover of "Ok Nefna Tysvar Ty", except the cover of "Heralding The Fireblade" shows the stormcouds over a mountain/valley landscape instead of over the shoreline. The cover of the digipak though is equally as impressive as the lyric booklet/jewel case cover. The digipak cover is completely white with the Falkenbach logo sitting above two crossed swords, two dragons and a Celtic cross design, which may actually be a shield, I'm not sure. All of this is done in gold and it feels like it's printed with some sort of rubber or other material. It's very impressive to look at. The inside of the lyric booklet has all of the lyrics, and each page has a little banner styled image depicting what each song is about that runs along the top inch or so of each page. It's a pretty neat and fixes the problem a lot of lyric booklets have where they put an image on the entire page of the booklet which makes the lyrics sometimes hard to read. For those of you that have C.D. players that have the CD Text technology, you'll be able to see what song is currently playing as well.
Falkenbach fans are very loyal, so for those people this review isn't going to help you out much as you'll pick it up anyway, no matter what I say. I can say you won't be disappointed, especially if you pick up the digipak version of the C.D. that has the bonus instrumental track "Gjallar"! You'll like "Heralding The Fireblade" as much as the other albums, if not more. In my opinion, this is Falkenbach's finest album, and one that will make me look back on 2005 with fond memories. To those of you that have yet to hear this band, what are you waiting for? This would be the perfect album for you to pick up and get into the band with, then you can work your way backward through their discography because though this has always been a great band, they seem to get better with age.
[Napalm Records]
Well, we had to wait over two years for a new Falkenbach album, but it's finally here! Sort of! Falkenbach's newest album "Heralding The Fireblade" actually consists of re-recorded and updated versions of older songs that were never released. The songs off of "Heralding The Fireblade" were written and I believe partially recorded long ago. These tracks were supposed to be the band's debut album, but due to bad sound and recording equipment, I guess Vratyas Vakyas decided to pull the plug on this instead of releasing a bad sounding debut album. I agree with him on that decision! Who wants a terrible sounding debut album?
The music on this new album has two sides. One side is raw and unrelenting Black Metal, the other is epic Viking/Folk Metal. The raw Black Metal tracks are quite a surprise coming from Falkenbach. They've always had a bit of a raw Blackened sound at times, but never this raw and Blackened! These rawer tracks are done well though, and still have a ton of atmosphere surrounding them. Judging from these songs, I'm thinking that Falkenbach must have had a bit more of a Black Metal sound during the band's formative years. The Viking/Folk stuff is excellent as well, and naturally I like these tracks the best. Some people that heard the album before I did said this album wasn't as Folk oriented as their earlier albums. I beg to differ as the Folk flavored tracks are still extremely Folky, monumental, and epic and proud sounding. In fact, this album is actually the first Falkenbach album to use a violin and not rely totally on the synth like the previous albums did. The album kind of plays out in an alternating style, meaning that there's a raw Black Metal track, then a Viking/Folk Metal track, etc. The musicianship and songwriting ability of the band is excellent, as always. Back in the band's early days I believe Vratyas did everything on the first two albums himself (or he may have had help from one other person). While I loved those albums, I thought the band started to really excel at what they did with their 2003 album "Ok Nefna Tysvar Ty" when Vartyas brought together a full band lineup under his leadership. On "Heralding The Fireblade", we see all of the same musicians from the last album show up once again. Vratyas does an excellent job on creating and playing the guitar melodies as well as those great keyboard passages that Falkenbach is famous for. Second guitarist Hagalaz has proven to be an accomplished guitarist, and you'll hear this for yourself when you listen to his amazing acoustic guitar work on this album! Trollhorn, Falkenbach's drummer, is perfect for this band as he can belt out Black Metal blast beats as well as sound Folky as hell by playing various percussion instruments. Vratyas formed himself one hell of a band here, and I hope he keeps this lineup for quite a while.
Vratyas has had a clean "Folk" vocal style that he's used since the band's debut album that I've always really liked. It's super clean sounding and filled with emotion - and nothing sounds better than that, my friends. At times on this new album there'll be some choir styled vocals that sound like they come from the halls of Valhalla. These choir parts are actually made up of three or four of Vratyas' vocals tracks laid over top of one another. It's all him! Very cool, indeed. Second vocalist Tyrann returns for the recording of "Heralding The Fireblade" to add his raw Black Metal and Spoken Word vocal talents to the album, and this time around we even are witness to a few female vocals on the track "Skirnir". The lyrics are all written and sung in English, and the lyrical themes are mainly about Norse Mythology, Heathenism, nature, and battles.
The production on "Heralding The Fireblade" is actually a bit better than "Ok Nefna Tysvar Ty", and the production on that was perfect! Seeing as how the band has mixed raw Black Metal and the more epic stuff more than ever before on this album, it's quite respectable that they pulled it off so well.
The packaging and layout of the digipak version of the C.D. I got is one of the best of the year! The actual official album cover art which is used as the cover of the jewel case version as well as the cover of the lyric book of the digipak version, is very similar at first glance to the cover art for the last album. This cover shows the sun trying to peek out through a stormcloud filled sky at twilight. If you weren't paying attention, you'd mistake it for the cover of "Ok Nefna Tysvar Ty", except the cover of "Heralding The Fireblade" shows the stormcouds over a mountain/valley landscape instead of over the shoreline. The cover of the digipak though is equally as impressive as the lyric booklet/jewel case cover. The digipak cover is completely white with the Falkenbach logo sitting above two crossed swords, two dragons and a Celtic cross design, which may actually be a shield, I'm not sure. All of this is done in gold and it feels like it's printed with some sort of rubber or other material. It's very impressive to look at. The inside of the lyric booklet has all of the lyrics, and each page has a little banner styled image depicting what each song is about that runs along the top inch or so of each page. It's a pretty neat and fixes the problem a lot of lyric booklets have where they put an image on the entire page of the booklet which makes the lyrics sometimes hard to read. For those of you that have C.D. players that have the CD Text technology, you'll be able to see what song is currently playing as well.
Falkenbach fans are very loyal, so for those people this review isn't going to help you out much as you'll pick it up anyway, no matter what I say. I can say you won't be disappointed, especially if you pick up the digipak version of the C.D. that has the bonus instrumental track "Gjallar"! You'll like "Heralding The Fireblade" as much as the other albums, if not more. In my opinion, this is Falkenbach's finest album, and one that will make me look back on 2005 with fond memories. To those of you that have yet to hear this band, what are you waiting for? This would be the perfect album for you to pick up and get into the band with, then you can work your way backward through their discography because though this has always been a great band, they seem to get better with age.
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Tracklist:
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| Rating: 10/10 | |
| Release Date: 2005 | |
| Length: 58:07 | |
| Review By: Britton Dicks | |
| Total Reviews: (1) | |
| Band's Website: Go Here | |
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