### Adorned Brood: Asgard

#### 27/11/09 || Euthanatos

Last we visited Adorned (to decorate or add beauty to, as by ornaments: garlands of flowers adorning their hair) Brood (a number of young produced or hatched at one time; a family of offspring or young), they were still prodding on the Viking path, and Odin bless them for that, can’t have enough Viking metal in the world, can we?

So, what’s this? A new album already? Nay, my heathen friends. ‘Tis a 2000 release of theirs, that for some godforsaken reason has been sent to us now. You know what’s funny, though? I like this album a lot more than “Noor”. That means, my good Germans, that you’ve fucked up somewhere along the way and lost your inspiration. That’s not good. Go back to the times of “Asgard”, and all will be well.

This album is a lot folkier than their latest release, and that makes me much more interested. The female vocals are also more present, so, Frost, pipe down and let the woman sing. The woman, Ingeborg Anna, incidentally also plays flute, and it’s a nice flute, so let’s leave the flute be.

By the way, what odd name these people have. Frost. Anna as a last name. Benjamin. Tim. TIM. What in the fuck? How can you have a drummer named Tim? Good sir, kindly proceed to changing that immediately. Something devilish and manly, like Blashkreefarth. Not Tim. Tim is a name for crippled children, not metal drummers.

No doubt, the metal part is present here as well, and it’s also a lot rawer, blatant death/black metal, and not the viking metal yarn of “Noor”. Not that I’m complaining, just stating facts, and, oddly enough, it seems that as Adorned Brood evolved their sound, they also lost a lot of its most appealing characteristics.

There are some nifty tracks here, like the pretty instrumental “Twilight in Midgard” and the epic “Pride Was My Desire”, even though Frost’s harsh vocals sound terrible, his clean vocals go along great with Anna’s.

The production is not the best around, but good enough for something that was released almost 10 years ago. It somehow suits the band’s sound at the time, and I can’t help but wish that they’d dig for their roots for their next effort.

This is much more a Cruachan/Waylander/Falkenbach type of album than Amon Amarth/Einherjer, as I’ve said, not much Viking, pretty much folk is what is to be heard here. And I think the band does a better job in the latter than the former. I wonder how much we have to pay them so they’ll go back to this sound? Would they accept GD hoodies? Hmmm.

The cover: Good lord, it looks like it was made in the sixties, I can’t even figure out what’s going on. Two people smoking pot is my best guess.

- Information
- Released: 2000
- Label: Moonstorm
- Website: www.adornedbrood.de
- Band
- Frost: vocals, bass
- Ingeborg Anna: vocals, flute
- Andreas: guitars
- Benjamin: guitars
- Tim: drums, piano

- Tracklist
- 01. Intro
- 02. A God Ruled Time
- 03. Asgard
- 04. Black Beasts
- 05. Twilight in Midgard
- 06. Pride was my Desire
- 07. The Ambush
- 08. Magic Nights
- 09. Mighty Swords
- 10. Arrival
- 11. Die Wiederkehr