Northland – Revenge (2010)

cover

While most Folk Metal bands can easily be picked apart based on their sound, we totally screwed it up when trying to figure out where Northland comes from by only listening to their music. The band’s music is heavily inspired by Scandinavian Viking/Folk Metal and some Celtic elements, but they are from Barcelona, Spain! Something we did not expect until we actually visited the band’s MySpace page.

Featuring a full six-member line-up, the band creates a very rich sound that will surely make them one of your favorite bands of the genre. And having only released two demos prior to “Revenge”, we are quite impressed behind the quality, both in sound and songwriting, of this release.

The rich Folk sound is very persistent in this release and it might put down fans of more aggressive bands, but Northland still manages to have enough aggression on their music to have the perfect balance between Folk and Metal that many bands struggle to achieve. The violin is probably the most notable element in this release and we completely dig its sound, especially when used around the clean vocals.

One thing that we do notice is that the band’s sound does get a bit tired after a few songs since the ‘folk elements’ sound very similar. We would love to hear this band add more variety in their future releases. The harsh vocals are very well crafted and sound a bit like Petri Lindross at some points. We would have liked to hear more sections that mix the clean female and male vocals like on “Distant Land”, but this in no way makes “Revenge” lose any points in our book.

The band’s previous demo’s lacked the great production values that “Revenge” has, but the band slowly made a name for themselves with their very well crafted songs. On “Revenge” we finally get to hear all the good ideas behind this band’s music very clearly and perfectly mixed.

“Revenge” is yet another solid Folk Metal release from Black Bards Entertainment, so if you like music in this genre this label has enough variety for you. This Spanish band has all the elements that are needed to make it on this very crowded genre and we are sure that with a little more work they can vastly improve for their next release.

Band: Northland Album: Revenge
Label: Black Bards Entertainment

Release: Juen 15th, 2010

Official Site myspace
Genre: Folk Metal

Country: Spain

Rating: 87/100
Year: 
Genre: 

Recent Image Galleries