June 2020 Feature Release - The North Edition

It's now June which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. Ben & I will certainly be contributing & we look forward to hearing your thoughts too.         

This month's feature release for The North is 2005's fourth album from German Viking metal outfit Falkenbach entitled "Heralding: The Fireblade". In a subgenre that's so dominated by early 90's Bathory, we thought we'd introduce you to a well credentialed competitor to see if they cut the mustard.

https://metal.academy/releases/3955

Falkenbach have lurked on the fringes of my radar for a while now without much sense of urgency on my part to really pursue them.  I have some downtime tonight so put this on whilst sat doing nothing else and so far I am glad I did.  Reminds me an awful lot of Borknagar in the cleaner vocal parts and also structurally.  The first track is a bit naff but things pick up from track two onwards mostly definitely.  Thanks for sharing Daniel, will be exploring some more over the coming week.

As you may know, I am a huge sucker for this brand of pagan influenced black metal and Falkenbach are a welcome sight, from a band that I had no idea existed prior to checking out this album through the clan challenges! The atmospheric touches tipped off by the huge guitar tones give this album an epic sound not that far removed from a band like Saor, but without the humongous compositions and forms.

The album sounds excellent with the very solid low end, flutes, fiddles and horns as alternate counterpoint to the melody, and a great dichotomy of clean singing and harsh black metal screeching. A couple of small quibbles hold this album back for me, but a great little project that I will certainly be returning to. Thanks for the recommendation Daniel!

8/10

I haven't heard this album yet, but I'll def check it out sometime. My previous experience with Falkenbach resulted in one of the most enjoyable reviews that I've written, which I entitled En Their Medh Riki Fara or: How I Learned to Stop Being Elitist and Love Viking Metal. You can read it here if you care to: https://metal.academy/reviews/966/3952

Although Falkenbach sounds extremely clean when it comes to Black Metal tinged Folk Metal, I found this one to be a pretty dull slog for the most part. There were definitely some standout sections, especially when the harsh vocals started coming into play, but I felt like a lot of similar riffs and ideas were overused throughout the album. Heralding hits its stride in the middle of the album with "Roman Land", "Heralder", and "Laekmishendr", but the rest of it has a very sluggish triplet or 6/8 feel that didn't really interest me. It's still a very pretty album with great dynamics on the folk elements, don't get me wrong, but I wish there was a bit more to it. I'll have to check out some more Falkenbach to see if any of their other stuff interests me, or maybe I need to come back to this one for another round. 

3/5