Tag: folk metal

TEE’s Best of 2011-2018

I once received an email asking me if I had best-of lists for previous years before I started this site. I do, but I didn’t have easy access to them. Posting rundowns of new music I listened to in a given year was something I did on my personal Facebook page via the site’s now-defunct Notes feature 2011-2018.

Recently, I decided to see if I could access them, and it turns out I can! It’s just a hassle. I figured it may be good to copy them over here to hopefully give them greater longevity. I don’t trust Zuck to not just entirely nuke the Notes archive at any given moment.

Before I get into this, a few disclaimers and clarifications:

My first best-of list was actually in 2010, but I do not have that. At the time, I had a show on the University of Washington’s radio station, and the station asked everyone for a top 10 list for that year. I submitted my list, along with a one-sentence description of each record. Everyone’s lists were published in the campus paper. I tried searching The Daily’s archives, but I couldn’t find it. 

For the first few years I did this, it wasn’t a ranking. It was everything listed alphabetically with a score out of ten. (It should also be noted that my scores out of 10 are scaled differently than my scores out of 100, which are in turn different from my RYM 5-point scale and ProgArchives’ 5-point scale.) I eventually eschewed the scores in favor of a ranked-list.

These are also not curated best-of lists. These cover all records released in a given year I listened to, so there’s usually some real crap mixed in there.

While I would say my taste has mostly remained consistent, my opinions on a number of records have shifted over the years, sometimes significantly. I will be posting the lists in the order in which I originally posted them with my original commentary, typos and all. However, if my views have shifted significantly, I will add a note explaining so.

I’m not planning to add images to this. That’s just going to take too long. From 2015 onward, I included Bandcamp links. For earlier ones, I would often include a YouTube link; I will add Bandcamp links where I can.

Alright, let’s get to it!

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Album Review: A Forest of Stars – Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface

Band: A Forest of Stars | Album: Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface | Genre: Progressive metal, Post-metal | Year: 2026

From: Manchester, UK | Label: Prophecy

For fans of: Arcturus, Ashenspire, Primordial

Bandcamp

A Forest of Stars has been around for nearly 20 years, but this record is my first exposure to them. It is their first release in eight years, so, in my defense, they have been quiet lately. Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface is their sixth full-length release, and it’s full of theatrical, abstract, and highly emotive music that draws from classic prog, folk metal, folk, and avant-garde music. It’s a demanding record: the six songs range between nine and 17 minutes in length, and all the compositions are dense as hell. But it’s well worth your time and attention.

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Odds & Ends – August 2, 2021

Band: Albion | Album:Pryderi | Genre: Progressive metal, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

Albion is the latest in a long line of acts that take the very English genre of progressive rock and make it sound even more English, with a significant injection of folk. Think of bands like (mid-to-late ‘70s) Jethro Tull and Gryphon. This quartet is quite a bit heavier and more bombastic than any of that first wave of prog-folk-rock acts. There are some neat ideas on this EP, but there’s also just a lot of stuff that sounds like it’s been done before. A lot of this is power metal-based, and I will admit, that’s not my favorite metal subgenre. If you’re into some of the more fun-time, corny folk metal acts out there, you might enjoy this.

Score: 62/100

Band: The Dark Monarchy | Album: All Roads Lead to Rome | Genre: Progressive metal, Power metal | Bandcamp

This album has flashes of brilliance, but it never is able to maintain it for too long. The cheese factor on this album is incredibly high, and most of the songs run together into an unidentifiable mush. The opening track, “I Am Lucifer”, is especially strong, but there isn’t enough here to have this record go on for 45 minutes.

Score: 60/100

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Odds & Ends – July 12, 2021

Band: BaK | Album:Crater | Genre: Progressive rock, Progressive metal | Bandcamp

BaK is a bombastic Australian act which blends the sound of acts like Pain of Salvation and Dream Theater with Middle Eastern instrumentation and rhythms. The closest parallel to BaK is probably the Tunisian power metal act Myrath, though some of the weaker moments on this EP do remind me of Grorr. The integration of those more exotic influences is done better than most acts who attempt similar genre fusions, but it’s still really tough to not come off as corny.

Score: 71/100

Artist: Christian Cosentino | Album: Lawn | Genre: Progressive metal | Bandcamp

This proggy atmospheric black metal album makes extensive use of lush, programmed orchestration. Many parts of this record feature piano as a co-lead instrument alongside guitar, and strings are almost always present. Normally I’m not the biggest fan of this type of arrangement, but I credit the success here to the fact that he went in a more atmospheric direction, instead of something more traditionally proggy, technical, and overblown.

Score: 81/100

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Album Review: Huntsmen – Mandala of Fear

Band: Huntsmen | Album: Mandala of Fear | Genre: Progressive metal, Post-metal, Doom metal | Year: 2020

From: Chicago, USA | Label: Prosthetic Records

For fans of: Panopticon, Pallbearer, early Mastodon

Bandcamp

I’ve got mixed feelings on the term “folk metal.” On one hand, you can have some genuinely creative fusions, while on the other hand you have schlock like Korpiklaani. (Korpiklaani are very fun in a live setting, but there’s no denying they are extreme schlock.) Over the last decade or so, there have been some uniquely American attempts at folk metal. Almost all of these have been made with a straight face, in contrast to many of the campier European acts (the aforementioned Korpiklaani, Finntroll, etc.). Panopticon, with their intertwining of black metal and bluegrass, is likely the best-known example, and I’d argue for including Zeal & Ardor’s Satanic spirituals under the “folk metal” umbrella.

Huntsmen’s Americana influences are less in-your-face than either Panopticon or Zeal & Ardor, but they’re nonetheless present in the band’s vocal arrangements, melodic choices, and electric-acoustic contrasts. This Chicagoan quintet also bases their sound in doom metal and post-metal, as opposed to the more common folk metal template of black metal.

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