“At the end of the twelfth century, in the city of Acre, one of the most powerful cavalry military orders the world had ever seen was born…”
Thus begins the Prologue to Rex Regi Rebellis the first track of The Northern Crusades by Icestorm. So far, so epic, so historical. And I thought I listened to a lot of Turisas back in the day. That said, there’s nothing wrong with wearing your influences on your (chainmail) sleeves, and Icestorm certainly do. There is, however, a fine line between “heavily influenced by” and “derivative of”, which The Northern Crusades just about stays on the right side of.
There’s plenty of Turisas-style battle metal™, some cleaner folk influences that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Korpiklaani album (genuinely not convinced they didn’t borrow Jonne Järvelä for part of track 3, The Iron Fist on the Lance Shaft – stop sniggering at the back). There’s also an element that could be compared to Sabaton, but this is mostly lacking the bombastic tongue-in-cheek air that Sabaton have carefully cultivated over the years. Add some growly death metal vocals to that lot, and you’ve basically got Icestorm.
In some ways, the obviousness of the influences on display here make my job a lot easier than it could otherwise be: the reference point of (Turisas + Sabaton + Korpiklaani) x Cookie Monster vocals = Icestorm gives one a mental image of The Northern Crusades that is pretty spot on. Above all else, this is an album that does what it says on the tin. It’s a melodic death metal concept album about actual historical events and people, it includes folky flourishes, the odd choir and a bit of mildly unexpected instrumentation for atmosphere, lots of earnest sword (or lance) waving tunes about great battles of history, and there’s that one track that’s more catchy than the rest (The Iron Fist on the Lance Shaft). There’s even a touch of early Alestorm in track 9, Novgorod Arise. If that sounds like your sort of thing, you’ll love this album. If it doesn’t, you won’t.
If you’ve got to this point, I’m going to assume that this is indeed your sort of thing, and you want to know a bit more about individual tracks. We start with Crusaders of God, which is the spoken word intro track quoted at the beginning: if you’ve heard the also-aforementioned Prologue to R.R.R., you already know this track. Then we dive straight into Across the Baltic Sea, which sets the tone and mood for the rest of the album very effectively but isn’t overly remarkable in itself. The Iron Fist on the Lance Shaft (which is a belter of a title, and possibly my favourite bit of this entire review), is probably the catchiest bit of the album, although the underlying melody sounds enough like an old Stratovarius track (When Mountains Fall, for the power metal fans), that I keep expecting Timo Kotipelto to join in. The Night Before the Battle is a short, fairly self-explanatory instrumental, which wouldn’t be out of place soundtracking a suitably epic video game. The rest of the album continues in much the same vein, and I suspect you’ll have figured out if it’s your thing by this point anyway.
All in all, it’s not a bad album. If historical epics and death metal are your thing, you won’t go far wrong with The Northern Crusades. The only thing that lets it down for me – and some of you won’t be nearly as picky on this as I’ve become over the years – is the fuzzy production, which doesn’t do this album any favours. There’s a fair bit of finer detail, especially in the first half, that would be far more effective with cleaner, clearer mixing; as it is, a lot of this detail merges into the background, which is a shame, as some of it’s actually quite good.
(6.5/10 Ellie)
Leave a Reply