Folk metal bands: you either love their jaunty refrains and occasional use of penny whistles, or you want to invade their lands and impale them all on large spikes. I will admit that they may be slightly over represented in my music collection. But I’d usually reserve my attention for the ones that use folk or pagan links most wisely – or perhaps most sparingly would be a better description. Not for me are the ‘drinking’ songs that might have been lifted from a cheesy 1950s Hollywood film with Norsemen that sound like they have lived in America for generations rather than stumbled into it during the last fishing trip.
In short, I’m a refined sort of chap that prefers his pagan metal sung from darkened, snow-capped peaks rather than some cartoonish local tavern. And, after vaguely remembering I’d briefly encountered some of their material years back, I steeled myself to give Waylander a verbal battering before getting back to planning my next raid on the nearby monastery. Listening casually to the first few tracks initially did little to change my mind but by the fourth track, Of Fear and Fury, these crazy lads had begun to weave something of their Gaelic spell around me. On second listening, if not quite hooked, I was mightily impressed. This is no run of the mill band bashing out a few tunes and hoping a picture of a long ship on the front of the CD will be enough to attract your attention. Waylander have the power to convert you to their pagan cause.
Kindred Spirits is a worthy successor to Honour Amongst Chaos, widely considered to be their break-through release. The continuation of the heavier, thrashier sound, rasping vocals and ‘Irish’ sounding tin whistle will please existing fans. I’m not sure this will be considered a radical step on from the last release but tracks like the addictive Lámh Dearg and the title track helps lift Kindred Spirits out of the trough of pagan metal bands clogging up the bargain basement bins and may even appeal to some that didn’t previously consider ‘folk’ metal to be their bag. The production sounds a little less dense somehow this time round but no less heavy.
If these guys are not quite in the premier league of folk metal bands, they are certainly heading in the right direction and this can only help attract a few more fans. The fact remains, however, that if you can’t bear the use of a tin whistle or mandolin in the bits of songs where you’d normally expect to hear a guitar solo, this might only make you want to skewer yourself or someone else.
(7.5/10 – Reverend Darkstanley)
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