Epic Finnish metal
EPIC! How can a word so small mean such a large thing? It was the first word that occurred to me upon hearing this album. Varangians, in case you slept through your Medieval Scandinavian history course, were 11th century Vikings who travelled southward through the Baltic and then east on a quest for glory. Thank you press release writer.
Finlands Turisas (named after a Finnish god of war, fact fans) have worked hard on this; it's evident in every riff, phrase and break out accordion interlude. There is power and story here, welded together with melody to form a meal so hearty that you'll be stuffed to the gills by the end. I'm not kidding, apart from the bombastic drums and huge guitars there is a string section, the aforementioned accordion and a brass section, all overlaid atop one another to form an album that must have taken some vision to form into a cohesive whole. Then of course there is the quite versatile voice of singer 'Warlord Nygard' who manages to range from clean and calm vocals reminiscent of 'Falconer' to the harsh growls of a marauding Viking swinging his way through a burning village.
As I'm sure you can imagine I get to hear a lot of albums doing this and though some of them are good they don't contain that special something to make me listen to them on my own time as it were, 'The Varangian Way' however is going into my car, it is a crafted piece of battle metal that puts most battle metal pretenders to shame, I feel almost guilty giving it the battle metal moniker as I feel that has come to mean cheesy half assed songs about nothing. This transcends that market by being a piece of genuine music that climbs up your spine and hits you on the head with a studded mace.
These guys can all sing, play and write and it's hard to believe this is only their second album; I can't even pick a best of the songs as they all have something to recommend them from full blown metal madness to folk song singalongs. Turisas are playing the main stage at Download this year so get down there and jump about like a mad thing while wearing your best animal fur and warpaint. If there is any justice Turisas will explode onto the scene this year and become as epic as their music suggests.