Dödsfärd

To me, there are only two great Manegarm albums. Nordstjarnans… is an excellent fairly straightforward black metal album with some folk influence, and Dodsfard is the peek of the folk metal aspects coming to the front of their sound.

The album starts with a very catchy fiddle park that is backed successfully with distorted guitar. I also can’t say enough about the nice alteration between growls and deep, haunting back-ups. But Manegarm are not afraid to show their black metal roots either. There are some impressive dynamics at play here. Expect lots of time changes, interesting drum fills, anthemic tremolo passages, blastbeats, and several clean guitar and string interludes. There's even the obligatory jaw harp here and there. Vocals range from deepening growls to three part harmonizing chants.

Fimbultrollet in particular is a really cool track. It starts off sounding like a gypsy ho-down, then slows down for a wonderful power-chord driven interlude that showcases a little bit of everything: some group chanting, a guitar solo, a bass solo, a touch of synthesizer for atmosphere…then nothing. The track cuts out briefly before throwing you right back to the energetic fiddles and guitar; only this time sounding fuller and faster. If I were trying to give someone a sense of the album, this would be the track I'd play them first.

I do feel the need to talk about the one problem I have with this album: Agirls Vrede. While the musicianship in the song is decent, with plenty of power-metal chords and a nice little “solo” in the second half, the vocals are atrocious. There are two types of vocals that Manegarm does well: straight black metal snarls and low-key baritone back-up singing. They instead opt for an half sung-half yelled abomination that clearly strains the vocalist’s throat and goes off key frequently. Not only do I cringe every time he does it, but it ruined every release for me henceforth as he does it more and more each album. Maybe it’s supposed to sound “raw?” To me it just sounds terrible. It’s a shame too, because I really like the speedy tremolo outro to this track as well.

Despite this one flaw, this is a great album. At just over 30 minutes, Manegarm manages to pack in quite a ride, all the while keeping it tight and moving along briskly. If someone asked me which Manegarm album they should listen to, it would be this one. The band is showing all of its strengths here. If this album leaves you wanting more, I would suggest Nokturnal Mortum. They have a similar sound but, in my opinion, do it better and more consitently from album to album.

Dodsfard is close to my heart. It's provided me with great drinking music for the past few years. So, you'll have to pardon my lack of rigid criticism as I slice into this one. It truly instills in me the untamable urge to raid, pillage, and hew the heads of mallcore kids with a hefty Viking battle axe.

The album opens with the wondrous tones of a fiddle with a phaser, playing fancifully. Leading into the classic I Evig Tid. Despite it being in pure Swedish, I still sing along to this robust Viking classic.

The same goes for the rest of the album - somehow I manage to sing along despite hardly knowing a lick of Swedish. And how could one help but wish to sing along? The insatiable fiddle melodies, the crushing yet melodious guitar barrage, the storming drums, and of course, the burly Viking singing.

The amount of textures and moods this band can go through, brings a sense of renewal. They never miss a beat, flowing from one into the next. When listening to this for the first time, I’d imagine one would never know what to expect next. Not from track to track, nor riff to riff. Where the crushing track Ravenous opens with a riff that demands you bang your head relentlessly, the interlude in the middle melts away to a more atmospheric tone, but eventually touches on black metal as well. Fimbutrollet enters with an almost rustic folky part that invites cheer. Vrede fades from malicious death tinged black metal to soothing folk. Ursjalens Visdom is a gorgeous meloncholy track that puts the listener in a trance state. They touch on everything but never let it feel like they’re reaching beyond their abilities.

This is probably the Manegarm album with the least black metal feel and riffs. The songs are to the point, with all but one being under 4 minutes. Apparently, three minutes is all you need to raid a village.

This was the first album I heard by the band, and it is indeed a great place to start with them. Despite my less than serious introduction to this review, Manegarm is a band I hold in the highest regard, and my sentiments toward them are indeed very stern. I felt a profound attachment to this music when I first heard it, and it only gets stronger with time. And that, is truly the essence of a classic.



{Originally written for http://www.metalcrypt.com}

Månegarm has released three full-lengths; the two first being quite raw viking black metal with some folk. Their third release, Dödsfärd, sounds very different. Månegarm has become more melodic at the expense of the rawness. The folk influences are now heavier. The violin is more present than on Havets Vargar. There are not as many blastbeats as before, and clean vocals are used more. Something that hasn’t changed, however, are the short song lengths. Månegarm has a tradition of putting out albums with many short songs instead of a lesser amount of longer songs. This is something that they should change, and if they start making longer songs then their next album will be absolutely wonderful. Well, if they keep the tradition, the next album should be absolutely wonderful since Månegarm is one of the bands that only get better and better with every release.

The vocals have become more varied since the release of Havets Vargar. The vocalist, Erik Grawsiö, does a very good job; he does deep guttural growls, traditional BM screams and occasionally some clean vocals through the album. He does the harsh vocals without flaws, but the clean parts could really be better (although they are still passable). The lyrics are good, and there are, for the first time, lyrics in English! Well, I wouldn't mind if Månegarm skipped the English for the next album, even if one of the two English songs, Pagan War, is really, really good (although the lyrics are somewhat suspicious). I believe that Swedish fits Grawsiö's tongue better. The songs are varied too; they are mostly fast but not furious, but there are also some rawer (Ravenous, Dödsfärd) and some mellower songs (the last two), unlike Havets Vargar where almost every song was raw and furious - not that it is a bad thing, but Månegarm's new style is so much better.

As previously mentioned, there is much more melody on Dödsfärd than on the previous two albums. Judging by the song quality here, it is a wise decision. The album opener, I Evig Tid, is a perfect example of this. It opens up with an absolutely wonderful violin melody accompanied by heavy guitar riffs, then continues into a folkish guitar melody before it finishes off with violin melodies. Most songs on Dödsfärd follow this pattern; folk and guitar, then only guitar, then folk and guitar again, so the song structures are not much varied, but it sounds good so I'm not going to complain.

Just like any album, Dödsfärd has its peaks (I Evig Tid), but there is not a single weak song on the album. Every song is almost as good as each other. The main weakness of Dödsfärd is, as I mentioned, the short song lengths; eleven songs with a total playing time of 32 minutes is too short for an album. It really is a shame, especially when the songs are this good. However, Dödsfärd is still a very solid album and definitely one of the better VM albums available, although not as good as Viking classics such as Twilight of the Gods and Vikingligr Veldi. If the songs were longer, Dödsfärd would probably be pretty damn close to these albums. I hope Månegarm's next album, Vredens Tid, is as good as this but with longer songs, if it is then Vredens Tid will probably be a future classic. Well, all we can do is wait and see. At least we'll have Dödsfärd to listen to if Vredens Tid is a disappointment, which I doubt.

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