Today’s review is of British Pagan Metal project Aethelruna’s new album.
This release offers a great stylistic shift for this project, turning towards an epic and heavy direction that highly reminds of current Graveland, while some Bathory influences are also clearly present. This 3 song odyssey embarks the listener through catchy riffs, amazing solos, grandiose symphonies and passionate vocals.
Nonetheless, the album’s mix has given too much importance to some elements, drowning other instrumentations that with a different production could’ve shined better. The album would’ve also been more coherent if it were divided into more tracks, at least towards the end, even though “Saga Hwaet Ic Hatte” really is an interesting song that shows how such a closed subgenre can still implement innovation while engraving that powerful main riff into the listener’s mind. Other parts of the full-length seem to approach Power Metal or end up too overloaded with orchestration and operatic vocals, but the Symphonic Metal nods are not that odd here.
I recommend this album to fans of Pagan Metal, Folk Metal and Symphonic Metal. My rating is of 8,5/10.
VARG THE MIGHTY
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