Angry Metal Guy

Crimfall – As the Path Unfolds…
Rating: 3.5/5.0 – Very good (Not groundbreaking, but seriously enjoyable)
Label: Napalm Records
Band Websites: crimfall.com | myspace.com/crimfall

“For fans of Turisas, Finntroll and Nightwish,” the advertisement read.  How could I possibly pass that up?  I’m definitely a fan of Turisas and Finntroll, though, Nightwish I can pretty much do without–sans diva or not.  But for me it was more a matter of how one could actually blend and compare these three bands into one cohesive whole.  “No,” I thought, “it’s really not possible to do in a convincing manner.”

Apparently, to my great dissatisfaction, I was wrong.

Crimfall was not convincing at first.  I listened to it up close and I laughed a lot, it felt like a charicature of all modern Finnish metal–extraordinarily produced with tons of big orchestrations, operatic vocals and chuggy guitars like Nightwish and Turisas mixed together with the folky feeling of Finntroll records, particularly in the vein of Nattfödd, with the misty feelings and interludes/segues from Visor om Slutet.  These things are blended together into powerful songs that burst out of your speakers like an angry Finnish viking¹, the strong, addictive melodies worming their way into your brain and setting root.

The song writing on this album is both interesting and fun.  The classic folk metal instrumentations are, of course, ubiquitous throughout every song.  The big orchestrations as well as the accordian, the mouth harp and other things of that nature punctuate the songs with their unique (but now familiar) sounds.  Helena Haaparanta, the female vocalist who does operatic vocals for the project is stellar.  Her voice ranges between (sorry) Tarja from Nightwish to a smoother, poppy vocal style which shows that she has some variability and, frankly, talent.  She even hits some very ethereal sounding vocals in the track “Hundred Shores Different,” and is all around impressive and talented.  In addition to that, the black metal vocals are also quite good–roughly peppering the tracks with their power and intertwining with the clean vocals in a fluid way (sort of like a modern incarnation of Theatre of Tragedy, but way more black metal).  Really, what the advertisement claims is true: if you’re a fan of any three of those aforementioned bands, particularly Nightwish or Turisas this record will probably totally float your boat.  It has all of the good things about Nightwish without the cheese or glam aspects, for example.  And it has the sheer, immense power that makes Turisas such a convincing and excellent band.

In the finest tradition of power metal, which is in essence “feel good” heavy metal these days, Crimfall have crafted a record that is a pleasure to listen to.  It doesn’t really offer anything particularly new and/or innovative, despite having a sound that is recognizable as their own.  But in spite of that fact, it continuously draws the listener back for one more listen over and over again.

You know what’s a stupid metal trend?  The 3.5 minute interlude with stupid soundscapes–these days, the trend is actually always involving the forging of iron or the angryness of trolls somewhere.  I don’t know where this started, so I’m going to blame Ulver.  Yeah, sure, Bergtatt was a great record.  It was really interesting and it had lots of cool stuff going on.  The stupid soundscape interlude, however, wasn’t.  Nope, just some guy running on crushed boxes (OK, maybe it was supposed to sound like snow, but it was definitely crushed boxes).  Vintersorg used it with great stupidity to interrupt one of his songs on Ödemarkens Son with the trickling of water because nothing screams metal like.. TRICKLING FOREST STREAM!!  (RAAAH!) It was used by Agalloch, but that was pretty much just them copying Ulver (actually, wasn’t The Mantel just them copying Ulver? Huh.  How ’bout that shit?).  In any case, in those cases it wasn’t super bad.  Just one or two places.. one could easily get through them without problem.  Just skip it, no biggy.  Right?

Well, the idiocy hit its zenith with Finntroll’s very “interesting,” but immensely annoying, use of 4 minute interlude tracks  which were apparently of people eating beans around a fire on Visor om Slutet.  What. The. Fuck?  Seriously, what an incredible waste of fucking space, plastic and time.  It is obvious that the band had only 25 minutes worth of acoustic material to record, but instead of just putting out a cute little EP where Finntroll goes “folk” or whatever, they decided to make it.. I dunno… Annoying?  Yeah, pretty much.  Or stupid.  The annoyance that I had with this record, was fortunately tracked–that is, I can skip the crap.  On the other hand Ásmegin did them one worse and putting a fucking crying baby throughout the whole second half of their otherwise AMAZING album Hin Vordende Sod & Sø.  How irritating is that?  Totally irritating.  I mean, I know you guys are trying to be original and interesting.. but stop.  Please, stop.  It hurts my brain.

I’ve been listening to Crimfall’s newest record, and it’s good.  But seriously, I’ve heard so much of this stuff before and it just makes me want to scream.  Since when did it become necessary and/or OK to put these stupid interlude tracks in everywhere?  Yeah, the album intro with the over the top orchestra or some stupid gore movie quote is now apparently obligatory.. I guess it’s not going anywhere, so I’ll have to live with it.  But can we stop with the “gazing into the past” sounds created in the studio in order to give your record some sort of stupid feel that doesn’t go at all with your over-produced orchestrations?  My god!  Just fucking stop it.  Not only that, if you’re going to include this stupidity for no apparent reason at all, then FOR THE LOVE OF THE METAL GODS: TRACK IT!  Make it different tracks so that I can skip your efforts to take yourself seriously as artists.  Stop it.  Stop. Stop. STOP!

I urge Steven Colbert to put these people on notice.  And I openly condemn this stupid metal trend.  Soundscape interludes: go fuck yourself!