Finntroll - Ur Jordens Djup
"Sit around the flames with a flagon of mead" began the press release, already piquing my curiosity "and invite yourself into our world, letting your mind travel to the ancient prophecies of the Earth's creation, the foundation of the trollish race and the chronicle of Rivfader, the ancient troll king". With this kind of amazing trollish nonsense, this could be none other than Finntroll with their new concept album 'Ur Jordens Djup'. With the rise of the genre of "Troll Metal" with similar bands such as Trollfest, Finntroll have proved themselves to be the undisputed kings and leaders of this folk-metal style.
Musically speaking, it's the same familiar Finntroll song with several new innovations. Songs such as 'Sang', 'Korpens Saga' and 'Under Tva Runor' could fit into any of their earlier material with their mix of Hummpa-inspired madness and death-black metal. However, the real shining moment of the album is the track 'En Maktig Har', a crazy, rampaging beast of a track featuring, of all instruments, steel drums. Quite simply, although there may not be some songs that are quite so insanely entertaining as 'En Maktig Har' on this album,
New vocalist Vreth more than fills the shows left by former singer Tapio Wilska, fired last year for unknown reasons. His vocals fit the music perfectly, but also actually adding a certain black metal shrieking edge to his style. In terms of performance and complexity for the most part the band members cannot be criticised at all, although there is a tendency to fall back into slightly generic parts for verse parts in some tracks. Fortunately this is generic by Finntroll standards, so it's certainly not unentertaining even if it can be a tad bit disappointing. In terms of the production on the album, nothing can be faulted although there is a tendency to put one of the guitar lines a bit too low to be as audible as we might want.
This is definitely a great new fresh start for everyone's favourite Hummpa metal band. Many bands land on shakey feet with a line-up change, particularly when it comes to singer, but Finntroll have come out shining with one of the strongest, heaviest and most diverse albums of their career. 'Ur Jordens Djup' is well worth picking up regardless of if you're a long-time fan of the band or an interested newcomer, so long as you don't mind not understanding a word of what they're singing about. Finntroll will be touring with Amon Amarth later in April and the chance to hear some of these songs live already has me salivating...