Månegarm - Vredens tid (2005)^{Release ID: 11728}

Manegarm’s fourth full-length has an accomplished sound to it. It truly blends the folk and black/Viking metal elements together well throughout its near fifty-minute run time in a solid display of powerful music. I find the inclusion of the female vocals to be a bit hit and miss but there are certainly a couple of occasions where I must admit they do add a real depth of ethereal beauty. The requisite inclusion of the cello and violin works well, and both compliment the riffs well without the sense that they are competing unnecessarily against the more aggressive elements of the album.

Structurally the album is a bit hard to follow I find though and as a result there is more of a sense of a series of similar sounding tracks being put together on a record instead of necessarily a flowing opus being delivered. I have no issue with the changing pace and tempos as they are usually done well and see the introduction of the more melodic classical strings or rumbling bassline to immediately hold the interest as the more frenetic pace ends.

When they hit their stride like on Hemfärd the band are unstoppable. Establishing a commanding tempo and stepping this down on a few occasions to let the song draw breath works well and re-energises proceedings on the longest track on offer here. I sense that overall, the album needs a couple more tracks like this to really make it shine though, instead it just feels like the true extent of the bands promise is not being fully showcased on Vredens Tid and there is some element of just going through the motions.

I've got to admit to not being the biggest fan of folk metal, outside of the odd Finntroll or Moonsorrow album. I feel it's too often the black metal world's answer to European power metal and has a correspondingly excessive cheese factor for my personal taste. In a perfect world any pre-existing personal bias shouldn't make any difference and each release would be judged objectively but, sadly, I am not that person and it explains my initial reticence as far as Vredens Tid goes, the upshot of which is that I wasn't especially engaged with it over the span of an initial listen. However, my disposition to Månegarm's fourth full-length improved over the course of subsequent listens and by the third or fourth spins I was genuinely beginning to enjoy aspects of it.

I think the primary reason for that is that the actual black metal side of Månegarm's folk metal equation, despite sitting quite firmly on the melodic side of the scale, is really well done and is pretty visceral. I don't think that the black metal savagery hits hard enough first time around, especially for someone like myself who doesn't listen to a whole lot of folk metal, but following subsequent listens when the folky trappings can be mentally stripped away it is apparent that a true black metal heart beats under the surface. This is most obvious in Erik Grawsiö's vocals as he delivers them with real blood-red aggression.

That said, there were aspects of the folkier side of things that I still struggled with. The album started quite strongly and the first two tracks proper after the intro are probably my favourites (although the eight-minute Hemfärd does come close). The violin work on opener Sigrblot in particular grabbed my attention and is the best iteration of the folk metal vibe on the record. On the downside the female vocals provided by Umer Mossige-Norheim didn't really do it for me and I found them a little bland to be honest, in fact they completely ruined the title track which is, in all other respects, a belter. The tendency for most of the tracks to end up sounding like a jig I also found grating after a while. Another annoying tendency in the small number of folk metal albums I've listened to is the "sound affects" tracks (Moonsorrow can be a little annoying in this respect), Preludium in Vredens Tid's case, which just adds nothing in my opinion and merely pads out the run time.

So a bit of a mixed bag for me, aspects both ridiculous and sublime feature during the album's eleven tracks. On the positive side, as far as folk metal is concerned it is one of the better albums I have heard and although I'm not likely to return to it much, tracks like Sigrblot, Vredens tid and Hemfärd may get an independent spin on Spotify as the mood strikes.