### Falkenbach: Asa

#### 17/12/13 || sincan

Falkenbach is a one man band which my only relation to is the album “…Magni Blandinn Ok Megintiri…”. I don’t actually know why I haven’t dived deeper into the music of Falkenbach since I really appreciate the above mentioned album. I guess I blame general confusion or my fellow writer Ironpants, maybe it’s an unholy symbiosis. But when I saw that “Asa” was released it semen like i came to my senses (at least partly) and tied my finest bowling shoes and went fishing.

Well I know that what I’m soon going to reveal (for you who don’t already know this) will make you feel that this album is not something for you since this and that and feces is good for you and whatnot but I will already tell you, before you know what I will say, that you’re wrong.

Okay, Falkenbach’s music can be described as a mixture of Viking/folk and black metal.

- holding my breath –

Are you still there? No? Good!

I know when that type of genre is brought up, you who are less stupid, along with me, usually approaches “this type” of music with contempt and painful memories of that time when your typical not so good “metal” friend showed “Trollhammaren” along with its video for you. He was most likely wearing an ironed shirt, shorts and trainers (which never was used for training) somewhere in the middle of November.

Yes 99.9 percent of the metal bands with “folk” and “Viking” included as genre descriptions usually blows the short and hairy one big time. HOWEVER there are actually bands who can handle this in a nice manner and by that not playing “humpa-bumba mead (as in cheap lager) life is jolly and full of women (but not for me)”-music with overused flutes and, for the Vikings, so typical keyboards. For instance we have Bathory, Sigrblot, Primordial and Isengaard just to mention about the only ones who actually can or could handle this in a good/epic/goat way, also along with Falkenbach I would say. Yes mentioning Bathory together with other bands is blasphemy but since I like blasphemy I have no troubles with doing it.

So let’s talk about “Asa” shall we? The album opener, Vaer Stjernar Vaerdan, is really good and raises the bar and expectations pretty high for the rest of the album, and that is good since we all like strong openers and not corny intros or anything (good intros are actually ok). One of the special features on this album is the styles of folk/Viking and black metal seldom being mixed in this little fucker. Usually we are served one epic (and I really mean epic) folk metal track followed by a black metal track and then this pattern is repeated throughout the album, roughly. This actually creates a rather interesting and good mixture of really different tracks or styles which works good and doesn’t confuse the listener at all.

Actually one could say that after every epic, emotionally heavy track it is nice to fuck things up a bit with some straightforward black metal. In theory this is at least still good. However, some (not all!) of the more brutal songs on “Asa” are a bit too generic for my taste which because of that sometimes tend to work as a time consuming passage between two greater tracks. So yes, the folkier parts are actually the strongest in general, maybe surprisingly for some? Another fine piece of music is the track Bluot fuër bluot which also weaves in some harsh vocals here and there which is not that common on this record.

But don’t be totally fooled when I say that some of the darker parts on this record is generic because there are gems here as well. Bronzen embrace and Stikke wound both has great tremolo riffs of awesomeness and “barbarian fist in the air on the top of a mountain”-pose potential. So eat some toadstool and start the party will ya?

- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Relapse Records
- Website: www.facebook.com/falkenbach
- Band
- Vratyas Vakyas: everything

- Tracklist
- 01. Vaer stjernar vaerdan
- 02. Wulfarweijd
- 03. Mijn laezt wourd
- 04. Bronzen embrace
- 05. Eweroun
- 06. I nattens stilta
- 07. Bluot fuër bluot
- 08. Stikke wound
- 09. Ufirstanan folk