King of the Distant Forest

Wow. Not only is this album shit, but it has two rather distinct flavors of shit.

First: the drums sound horrible, specifically the bass drum. Triggered, clicky, overloud and tiresome to listen to. Those who complain that Sonata Arctica, Stratovarius or whomever have irritating and overloud drums must hear this. When the double bass starts blasting, a headache is inevitable. And unfortunately, they blast very often.

Second flavor of shit reveals itself when the songs slow down, and we are treated with these In Flames melodies that will either bore you shitless or drive you up the wall. Come to think of it, I am more that convinced that the majority of the melodies on this album are ripped off straight from the first 3 In Flames albums, and the production is not all that different, either.

The worst parts are when both the drums and the melodies are combined with the vocals which are decent black metal shrieks, but clash horribly with the music, and are, thus, yet another layer on an already huge pile of shit. It won't be very long until they start to piss you off as well. There are occasional clean vocals which are more tolerable, but not by much.

There is no point in analyzing any individual songs, as they are all the same. They all mix up fast, tremolo, pseudo-black metal riffs with the slow, dull noodling without any cohesion or attention paid to the transitions. If you've heard one song from this album, you have heard the album in its entirety. It's almost an hour long, and yet you will be exhausted before the first song ends.

Thankfully, this band released only three albums, all of which are too similar to each other for separate reviews. In Flames-esque noodling, double bass rape, occasional cheesy synths and viking shouts, man, no wonder this band didn't last long. Out of the ashes of this band, Falconer would rise, and that band would suck almost as much as Mithotyn. As for Mithotyn itself, best to forget it and listen to Bathory's Hammerheart, Twilight of the Gods and the Nordland albums, to remind yourself how good viking-styled metal actually sounds like.

Well, "King of the Distant Forest" was my introduction to Mithotyn world. I usually define Mithotyn as a UNIQUE band. The perfect union of heavy metal melodies, speed, viking feelings e epic choirs... Yes, all this we find at one band.
Let's to the album... the album highlights are "Hail Me", "Under The banner", "Trollvisa" and "King of Distant Lands"The main music are power/heavy metal riffs with black metal voices. Strongly melodic and fast melodies. This album is near to perfection, is one of the best Viking Metal releases, a Classic....
Is really a pity that the band had broke up, you can found now similiar influences at Falconer that contains members of Mithotyn(Stefan Weinerhall the man behind the melodies and Karsten Larsson, the drummer). Well Falconer remember and have a lot of Mithotyn but is more near to Power/Heavy Metal because the voices are not like black metal.
Well, If don't know Mithotyn but like Power/Viking Metal, your CD Collection is missing a masterpiece...

I checked out Mithotyn a few months ago based on a recomendation from an amazon review of some band I was looking up. Anyways, uppon hearing two songs from them (Hail Me & Masters of Wilderness) I decided I needed this album. I must say, it's quite superb. The vocals are the typical screamed vocals like you'd hear in black metal bands (although Mithotyn aren't BM), the guitars are fast, high and at times heavy. The music can be really catchy and is easy to get into if you give it a chance. Stand-out tracks are the title track, Hail Me, Under The Banner, and Masters of Wilderness. But there's not actually any skip-worthy tracks on the disc, it's a solid listen from start to finish. I highly recomend it.