Review Summary: A slightly disappointing sophomore album, but still pretty great
Marrasmieli’s 2020 debut
Between Land And Sky was near-revelatory, achieving the epic sense of scope and scale implied by the the album’s title and wide-open, grand artwork. Meshing the folky, atmospheric side of black metal which is currently in vogue with thrashy riffage and epic sensibilities which suggested that Bathory’s
Blood Fire Death occupied a privileged place in the band members’ music collections,
Between Land And Sky proved to be one of the finest first albums in recent history (certainly for metal).
With all that said, when I saw the azure shimmer of the album cover for Marrasmieli’s second LP,
Martaiden Mailta, I was rather taken aback. To my mind, the image immediately suggests melodic doom or power metal, styles far from the raw ferocity the band manipulated so successfully on their previous effort. Nonetheless, after a number of spins, the album artwork for this second record makes sense.
Martaiden Mailta is a different take for Marrasmieli, even if the same overall genre descriptors are still applicable.
While the epic little intro track “Far, Frozen North” suggests that the listener is in for some grandiose journey not far from that of Marrasmieli’s debut, the remaining four tracks (all quite lengthy), suggest a slightly different animal. The band here is more restrained, opting for a more conventional folky black metal style. There are moments of ambience, moments of lonely dark folk strumming, and moments of unrelenting blackened brutality, but the sense of rough-hewn epic-ness which marked
Between Land And Sky has been trimmed back. One gets the sense that Marrasmieli are aiming for a more atmospheric listen here, and it works to a degree, but there’s the unfortunate reality that the group doesn’t quite manage to stand apart from the pack here like they did with their debut. That said, Marrasmieli are simply quite good at their craft, and the results speak for themselves. “Ghosts Of Past And Future” is fantastic, transitioning smoothly from folk to snarling metal to folk again in the way that plenty of artists aspire to, but rarely do so brilliantly. Meanwhile, “The Oaks Of England” begins with a jaunty admixture of blaring metal and folky instrumentation which is, as a music theory professor might say, “***ing awesome”, It’s a fine tune which forces the listener to try awfully hard in order to avoid the near-mandatory head-nodding and toe-tapping.
If it seems like this review compares
Martaiden Mailta excessively to its predecessor, it’s probably because that’s true. On its own terms, this is a refined album of class, indeed superior to most of the records which trod similar ground. However, the rescinding of the band’s previous first-wave influences does seem to limit the music here. If I had a crystal ball, I’d suspect it would reveal that
Martaiden Mailta is a transitional release, a stopping point on the road to Marrasmieli’s next success. Even if this proves so, though, this is an album well worth listening to in its own right for fans of various forms of atmospheric and folky black metal.
