Ensiferum - Thalassic (2020)^{Release ID: 21914}

Folk Metal is not a descriptor that I take with much consideration. Folk tendencies can be carried across any genre of music to accentuate melodic and scriptural themes. And Power Metal seems to be the place where it is surprisingly absent. Stylistically, it makes a lot of sense, since both are storytelling genres, as they talk about “folklore” and mythology.

Ensiferum have been around since the mid 1990s and Thalassic is their eighth, and most recent, studio album. And their blend of Power and Folk Metal work together incredibly well. I wish I could kick myself for not discovering them sooner.

For starters, they have a very unique sound. One that combines said Power and Folk Metal, as well as some very welcome Melodic Death Metal trends that I am a sucker for. The comparison that I made was to the French band Aephanemer.

Musically speaking, these are very well constructed Power Metal songs with some great production. The bass is fluent and carries these songs on their epic adventures, the melodic hooks in the vocals, guitars, and other folk instrumentation is solid, and the band is able to show off a diverse palette of sounds, without highlighting any true weaknesses. The mixing of the album is very good as well. There is a lot of double bass drum on this album, so balancing that with the melodic instruments is key and I think they did a very good job. The only thing that threw me off were some of the gang vocals feeling overly accentuated, such as on “One with the Sea”.

The end of this album tossed me another curveball as well and it left a bitter taste in my mouth when it was over. “Midsummer Magic” is a goofy jig that feels out of place with what transpired previously. And on the closing track “Cold Northland”, the bridge goes into a true melo-death riff, complete with percussion blast beats. I still like the song, but it felt out of place when it has been noticeably absent for the first eight tracks.

Still I really enjoyed this. This album's first seven tracks more than make up for its questionable direction in the final two and is just a lot of fun. It features some of the bands best individual songs and that’s high praise.