Bizarre Curiosities: Reverend Godless – Fresh Hell

by Nicholas Vahdias on May 29, 2019

The European metal scene has been infected for well over a decade by various Rock and Melodeath bands calling themselves Folk metal due to their use of traditional folk instruments playing typical drinking melodies while the guitars are either aimlessly chugging or playing Slaughter of the Soul string skipped melodies. These bands have pushed themselves away from metal and entertain people who enjoy the notion of metal and don’t care for the actual genre. Enter Reverend Godless a band who have taken the reverse approach. They take folk music and lightly apply some Rock and Metal notions to create their music.

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Lilou & John – Patriot Child (2018)

by Brett Stevens on March 3, 2018

Most people compare this music to Motorhead, but in my mind, it resembles a fusion between Black Flag and folk music like the old Bob Seeger tracks that limousine liberals pretended to like along with their Harry Belafonte and Leonard Bernstein LPs. A strong punk energy and rhythm pervades the music while a vocal-driven melodic sense guides each song to a quasi-ironic, bittersweet but triumphant conclusion.

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Folk Duo Launches Belzebubbles Site To Promote Censored Right-Wing Music

by Brett Stevens on June 13, 2017

We all know the score in entertainment: 90% of the people are full-tilt Left-leaning, and the remaining 10% have to hide their views until they are too big and too old to fear repercussions. A Swedish folk-rock duo named Lilou & John have launched a website, Belzebubbles, to feature Right-leaning bands who have been censored or ignored by the entertainment establishment.

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Nokturnal Mortum – Verity (2017)

by Daniel Maarat on May 14, 2017

With Verity, Nokturnal Mortum continue down the more commercial path they started embarking on The Voice of Steel and their half of last year’s The Spirit Never Dies split with Graveland: commercialized rock-constructed music with Ukrainian folk and power metal aesthetics.  On the inferior half of the The Spirit Never Dies, Nokturnal Mortum abandoned the use of the progressive rock techniques with speed, power, and Gothenburg metal riffs to craft compositions similar to the extended, droning flowing black metal compositions of past greats. Verity continues the slide down into Wacken fare.

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The Difficulties of Folk Metal: Part II

by Staff on August 1, 2016

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Article by Johan P.

This text is a continuation of the previously published article, The Difficulties of Folk Metal. As stated in Part I, the threefold aim of this multi-part article is, in rough terms, to: 1. Give a short introduction to the subject, 2. Point out some of the difficulties connected with integrating folk music into metal and finally, 3. Provide alternative methods of integration. Part II will be dedicated to the second part of this quest.

Naturally, there are limits regarding the scope of my endeavor – the most obvious demarcation being that the article primarily focuses on Swedish folk music. In my view, the critique of folk metal is an ongoing project, and this article should not be seen as an exhaustive treatment of the subject at hand.

So, if someone else out there finds the subject interesting, you are more than welcome to make contributions. It could be in the form of additional material (metal or folk related) and complementary ideas to enhance the project. For example, the depth and applicability of the arguments presented below would surely benefit if the scope could be expanded to include other forms of traditional music.

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The Difficulties of Folk Metal

by Staff on July 5, 2016

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Article by Johan P.

I’ve never been overly impressed by the folk metal phenomenon, which emerged in the middle of the 1990s and began to gain popularity some years later. I do not mean to imply that there isn’t any good folk music out there. On the contrary, there’s a lot of rewarding traditional music to discover. Many musicians – metallers included – have realized that their respective countries’ folk music reservoir is a gold mine for potential ideas to integrate into more modern forms of music. It was on these premises that folk metal was born. However, if the source material is to be successfully re-animated and be brought into metal or any other genre, it requires some serious work from the composer and performer. Most folk metal bands fail at this point for a variety of reasons, with the end-result often sounding like bad heavy metal adorned with folk-melodies that have been stripped of all subtlety to fit into a rock-based harmonic and structural environment.

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Nokturnal Mortum & Graveland – The Spirit Never Dies (2016)

by Staff on June 11, 2016

graveland & nokturnal mortum

Article by David Rosales.

Splits are usually revealing for reasons the bands do not intend. By allowing their music to be placed alongside that of another band in a way that listening to them one after the other is not only encouraged but, in metal culture, almost mandatory, they make comparisons and judgements based on performance differences inevitable. The aim might be to publish a few tracks more efficiently and getting the music to more people since people who know one of the two bands will listen to the other band out of curiosity. The more zealous metal fans, however, are bound to make harsher judgements of anything that is placed too close to the band they follow.

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