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› Elvenking - The Scythe
Track List:
The Scythe
Lost Hill Of Memories
Infection
Poison Tears
A Riddle of stars
Romance and Wrath
The Divided Heart
Totentanz
Death and the Suffering
Dominhate
The 4th album from the Italian folk metallers opens with a brief spoken word piece, before thundering into the title track.
The title track is a perfect opener for what appears to be a prime slice of power metal. It has all the things you would expect: Soaring vocals, staccato riffing and blistering solos. The following two tracks, Lost Hill of Memories and Infection follow pretty much the same pattern, with Infection introducing a few harsh vocals and a Terminator 2 style stabbinng sound. It isn't until track 4, Poison Tears, that the album really catches my ear.
With this track the band have introduced a different sound, I hate to say it, an almost emo kind of sound. The song is pretty uptempo with a hard, crunchy main riff, excellent harsh vocals, combined with soaring choruses. The middle section is so perfect, it could easily fit on Heathenreel with a nice acoustic, true folk style breakdown with a dirty bluesy solo.
A riddle of stars opens once again with a spoken poem, followed by a brief acoustic folk section, before launching into another two tracks, pretty much in the vein of the first two, upbeat and catchy, but didn't really stick with me in the way Poison Tears did.
The Divided Heart captures my attention once again. A mid tempo song, with a great opening lead section, acoustic first verse, then into an excellent groove and a real fist pumping anthemic chorus. Love this track!
Totentanz is almost an acoustic instrumental, with a folk groove all the way through and a few spoken words.....this track to me seemed like a filler, a nice track to dance folk style to, but seemed out of place.
Death and Suffering...Wow! A quick count in on the drums and we're launched into the heaviest riff I've heard this band play! An awesome combination of harsh vocals, soaring clean vocals, awesome guitar riffing and a solid pounding drumbeat. An excellent moshable breakdown in the middle, and cool melodic solo! This song makes me want to get up and headbang and air guitar around my room as I write this, I want to see this track live!
Dominhate opens with another heavy crunchy riff, before dropping back into a quieter section, then pounding us with some double bass drums and wonderful lead work. The song has a catchy anthemic chorus, and another groovy, melodic breakdown. A good ender to a great album.
The album as a whole, although a totally entertaining piece, is a continuation into the much darker sound started on previous album Winter Wake. The violins are a lot lower in the mix than they were on the first two, in my opinion, defining albums the band produced (Heathenreel and Wyrd). This choice isn't necessarily a bad thing, I do like the heavier sound just as much as I did the folkier sound of the first two albums. One of the only gripes I have with this album is the seemingly pointless spoken poem at the start of almost every track. I appreciate that there may be a story being told over the album..but as far as I can tell there isn't...it just seems a bit forced and meaningless. I won't dwell on that though, and let it spoil what is in essence an excellent album! Although I felt the first two tracks and Totentanz were a bit of filler, there is some excellent songs on here! Death and Suffering, Dominhate and Poison Tears are by far my favourite tracks on this album, and infact probably from any of their albums!
8/10
Ian
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