Elvenking is an Italian Folk Metal band that has been around since 1997 releasing 11 studio albums including their most recent one ‘Reader of the Runes – Rapture’. The band uses classic power and folk metal sounds, blending soaring guitars and folk instrumentals to create music that lends itself to fantasy.
The album starts strong with Rapture, an energetic song that incorporates soaring moments and an acoustic breakdown as well that helps switch things up. Overall a great tone setter that crafts a darker tone than usual on fantasy-themed albums, which works very well with the style. This is followed up by The Hanging Tree, one of the best songs on the album. Having a great chorus that lifts the energy of the song. Bride of Night is my favourite listen on the album, having a great tone in the guitars capturing a good blend of fantasy and darker tone.
The chorus is catchy and great to sing along to, with the rest of the song serving as a perfect build, especially with the incorporation of some growled vocals.
A big stand out here is lead vocalist Hemna, his voice isn’t high and soaring like that of voices found in power metal but his voice matches the music and lyrics perfectly, being able to change into what is required. Whether it be by growling, adding some gravel or being cleaner. His versatility is a big benefit, especially as the accompanying music does a fantastic job at setting the mood in the songs. Having a singer that can blend into it elevates the music as a whole, making it cohesive and executing the sound they want.
The instrumentals stand out here, too, the guitarists Aydan and Headmatt doing a great job at serving up great shredding but also helping set a dark fantasy tone in the songs. Songs such as ‘To The Earth’ are a good showcase of this, while the song ‘incantations’ offers some variety that has a rift that chugs along and slows down to make a song that has a foot-taping quality to it. But then it also has an acoustic part that offers a nice change and showcases an ability to be able to switch things up.
Drummer Symohn and bassist Jakob do a great job keeping up here to, providing a good backbone in all songs. The song ‘Red Mist’ is a great showcase of Symhon’s talent as he is able to keep the beat and add in some nice flourishes as well to add some colour to the song. A big standout amongst the band here for me was the violinist Lethien. Being very prominent in most the songs and always adding a great folk quality to the songs that enhances but does not distract from them, it also gives a unique sound to their music. Each song has nice flourishes of the violin but ‘Herdchant’ has particularly stand-out moments and the beginning of ‘An Autumn Reverie’ is a short but lovely intro.
The theme of the album as mentioned, is a dark fantasy tone that follows the character the Reader of the Runes. ‘The Hanging Tree’ is a good example of the darker tone as lyrics describe corpses hanging from a great oak tree and how the are becoming hugged by vines. For melodic music such as this, I appreciate the dedication to the theme and the ability to pull it off. The lead single ‘Rapture’ also paints a picture of a gloomy land that has seen its fair share of bloodshed, as the character sings that he sentences his enemies to rot for an eternity. It makes me interested in the music from an artistic standpoint and becomes more enjoyable to listen to.
Not too many negatives on this one, I’ve liked the output from this band before, but this feels like a very mature album that is very tight in many aspects. If you like Folk Metal definitely worth a listen. But even for others, the album is worth giving a go as its style of folk metal is a bit more subtle and the metal part doesn’t get over shown by the folk, and I would say is more of a metal/rock album with some melodic and folk elements to it.
Atrocity: Facebook
Release Year: 2022
Label: AFM Records
Category: Album
Country: Italy
Reviewed by Billy Poulopoulos
