ENSIFERUM Album Review: “Winter Storm”

ENSIFERUM
“Winter Storm”
Album Review by Iron Mathew

10/10

Ensiferum are a folk metal band from Finland formed in 1995, who meld the aggressive howls and scowls of melodic death with their folk metal roots – the five piece from Helsinki comprising the bands founder, guitarist/vocalist Markus Toivonen, bassist/vocalist Sami Hinkka (Metal De Facto), guitarist/vocalist Petri Lindroos (ex Norther), keyboardist/vocalist Pekka Montin (ex Amoth, ex Judas Avenger), and drummer Janne Parviainen (ex Walteri). Ensiferum have released nine studio albums across a nigh on thirty year career which has seen the band tour globally, and perform at some of the worlds biggest metal festivals such as Wacken Open Air, Hellfest, Summer Breeze and Ragnarok. The bands new album ‘Winter Storm’, is aggression fuelled yet melodic, fast yet sedate, boasting forty four highly head bang-able minutes and ten songs – the one minute instrumental ‘Aurora’ launching the album in full folk mode, raising the anticipation levels to intolerable heights…

…’Winter Storm Vigilantes’ exploding into life at full throttle, the howling, scowling vocals taking centre stage as Ensiferum press the pedal firmly to the metal – the various vocalists complementing each other. The myriad of metal styles on show is eclectic, the Finnish five piece displaying an immense amount of energy and drive, with every listener captivated by a barnstormer of an opening salvo! By crikey the air is sizzling red hot! Entering the fray, ‘Long Cold Winter Of Sorrow And Strife’ brings a mighty anthemic nature to the fore, the band hitting hard with a bombastic intensity that shudders the ground beneath their feet – beneath mine too! I can literally feel the ground here in the UK vibrating, and I’m over two thousand miles away from the band! Sensational stuff from a band very much at the top of their game, but then I wouldn’t have expected anything less from the Helsinki heavy metallers, ‘Winter Storm’ storming on with electrifying pace courtesy of ‘Fatherland’. The band are ferocious here, yet remain mightily melodic too, Ensiferum showcasing their incredible prowess at delivering metal music that encapsulates so many different styles! And I’m not even gonna attempt to list ’em all for ya, you’re just gonna have to figure them all out for yourselves!

Hitting the brakes hard, the band cease every ounce of ferocity and speed heard so far in favour of a hymn-like anthemic swagger as ‘Scars In My Heart’ strolls into sight featuring the soaring vocals of Madeleine Liljestam from the Swedish symphonic metal band Eleine – the staggering and immediate change of tempo and feel, simply astonishing! I tell ya readers, it’s like chalk and cheese, black and white or on and off – it’s extreme! ‘Resistentia’ – a Latin word that means “to withstand” or “to stand against” and is the root of the English word “resistance” – is a one minute mix of spoken word and tension building anticipation leading straight into the booming ‘The Howl’. And when I say booming, I mean boom – a boom louder than the estimated 180 decibel boom recorded when the volcano at Krakatoa erupted in 1883! Ensiferum are devastating the airways with their blend of folk metal to melodic death and everything in-between, the band attracting a multitude of listeners, fans and followers who all favour different genres of metal! Are Ensiferum acting as a mecca for metalheads? You bet your bottom dollar they are – or should that be bottom euro! Either way, the magnetism of the bands music has a stronger pull than neodymium magnets – widely regarded as the strongest magnets in the world! Until now!

Clocking in at almost nine minutes in length, ‘From Order To Chaos’ is by far and away the longest song on ‘Winter Storm’, and is an immense slice of anthemic metal, the band marching across the land with incredible purpose and intent! However, Ensiferum are not content just to march, roaring through the gears after two and a half minutes to adopt the iconic “metal gallop” of traditional heavy metal – the band maintaining their fabulous foray into many different territories! There’s even a little power metal here too, along with a touch of thrash metal aggression, the band continuing to surprise and delight at every twist and turn of ‘Winter Storm’. The band once again use Latin for the song title ‘Leniret Coram Tempestate’ – English translation “silence before the storm” – a forty second fairly serene prelude that segues into the albums final hurrah, the ferocity driven ‘Victorious’. And what a final hurrah ‘Victorious’ is – high velocity, neck snapping, bone breaking thrash metal taking front and centre to send every mosh pit into fucking overdrive! A breath taking and overly sensational finish to a superb album, Ensiferum are red hot!

Overall, a stunning album of folk, thrash, traditional and melodic death metal, ‘Winter Storm’ is a barnstorming barrage of head bang-able excitement.

TRACKLIST

Aurora
Winter Storm Vigilantes
Long Cold Winter Of Sorrow And Strife
Fatherland
Scars In My Heart
Resistentia
The Howl
From Order To Chaos
Leniret Coram Tempestate
Victorious

https://ensiferum.com/
https://ensiferum.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Ensiferum

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