Will of the Ancients

After hearing samples of this band’s music I made a note to myself to keep an eye out for their album on mail-order distributors. When I found it on cdnrecords.com I did not delay and Will of the Ancients’ self titled debut album did not disappoint. It’s epic, it has melody, it has force, and I can safely say it is one of the best North American albums to be recently released.

They also leave room for improvement. There is nothing to really complain about, but among the solid rollicking songs I feel there could be some tightening. The guitars are good, nice riffs and solos, the keyboards add a nice element almost making it sound sort of like Ensiferum or Finntroll, but Will of the Ancients are more aggressive. What I mean by that, is that they employers of the chaos of black metal. The drums are good, but there's one thing; the drums and the guitars almost drown out the vocals.

Almost…The vocals, still audible, are well done and they feature rasping near-death metal grunts and higher pitch BM stuff as well. There is room for development here too. Occasionally you will be treated to some clean vocals, which render a comparison to Falkenbach in my mind. But I would like it if the vocals were more audible over the sound of the instruments.

Regardless, this is a solid album. A tiny bit of tightening wouldn’t go amiss here and there, but potential is way up there. My favourite song is Bard’s Tale, but there is no bad song and depending on whether you lean towards epic or aggressive, your favourite song could be any of them. I recommend this album, and I recommend keeping an eye out for this band’s progress.