Review Summary: Nostalgic sound and stunning instrumentals.
Melodic black metal is a lovely twinkle genre that gives warm hugs. Tales is a lovely album that attempts to give a folksy, epic, through-the-woods vibe. While it doesn’t quite result in a pant exploding orchestration, what follows is razor edged. It’s an exciting assortment of battle ready tunes and occasionally interesting symphonics reminiscent of Equilibrium’s Sagas. If epic, symphonic black metal is your vibe, their song Old Tales will cheer you up. Used melodies are so well placed they feel rather cushy amongst the vicious shreds of the aggressive album.
Unfortunately, the unique qualities kind of stop there. The growls are very one-dimensional, as sharp as they are. It’s partly due to often placing them in the background more than foreground, with a reverb effect that somewhat obscures intended power. On the other hand, the vocals match the sound theme of going to war, with an atmospheric sound preferred. You might imagine the growler coming out of a dark, shrouded fog to slay enemies. Sounds cheesy perhaps, but it can’t be helped.
I do love this type of metal, but I feel there’s something for all metal lovers with this release. While the growls are aggressive they are not overbearing or grating. When the drummer gets in a rhythm themself, the flow is unstoppable, and the blast beats are impressively tight. Their folksy sound may give them a done-before sound, but this band goes hard. In fact, this album is so good that my writer’s block vanished when excitedly writing this review. Fans of testosterone should enjoy this faux-epic release, and will most likely wear Viking horns to the concert.
