It’s another day within my little music festival, but now we take a trip, from Sweden, to the beer-infused country of Germany. Keeping to the genre, today’s review is from another Folk Metal band, and one that’s considerably more substantial (I’ll get to that later) than last week’s offering. So get comfortable, maybe grab a tankard of mead, and look at my review of Empyrium’s 1997 classic, Songs of Moors & Misty Fields.
Background
Taken from the Wikipedia page:
“Elaborating on their previous full-length album, A Wintersunset... released a year before, with Songs of Moors... Empyrium delve into a more sophisticated intricacy of what is sometimes called "romantic metal", offering a complicated mix of percussion, flutes, bass guitars and synths, together with its will-be trademark deep baritone male vocals performed by Schwadorf himself (who also plays virtually all the instrument parties, except for keyboards).
The album contains some of Empyrium's longest tracks (e.g. Track 3), presenting a more epic-like musical texture. By many the album is deemed as a true masterpiece of melancholic, dramatical metal.
Songs of Moors and Misty Fields is the last doom metal album by Empyrium. Their following two albums, Where at Night the Wood Grouse Plays (1999) and Weiland (2002), are purely acoustic.”
Songs
Where Shadows Grow Longer ("***"): We begin this album with a short, but rather beautiful song. It decides to opt out of the heavy metal genre, and embrace the folk genre fully. There’s light guitar work that sounds reminiscent of lute playing, flutes, and some very beautiful piano. The singer’s voice never goes into the loud or growling modes that you’ll notice right after this song, and instead sound more like he’s reading from a poem. In fact, this whole song sounds like a trip back to medieval times, where knights rescued fair maidens, and jousting was common. A beautiful track to start off the album!
The Blue Mists of Night ("***"): Now we’re off into some metal! Right away your greeting by some fast guitars & drumming, not to mention a voice that goes from soft whispering, to a sort of low growl. After that things slow down, and some piano chimes in, along with a voice that’s both soft yet intense. From there the instrumentation takes over (Singing in rarely heard after the halfway point), bombasting you with more drums, more guitars, and some soft flute playing. Still some fantastic work!
Mourners ("***"): You know things are going to be intense when the first things you here are flutes, and some soft but steady drumming. Even then it still works up to the actual intensity, adding in guitars that increase in volume over time, and of mildly soft singing. Then, when you’re not expecting it, Mourners throws off the covers, and becomes a bombastic spectacle, where the instrumentation becomes loud, and the vocals gain an aggressive edge. After some spectacle, it goes back to it’s quieter phase, then back to the spectacle towards the end. It’s great to see a song go between two phases, and not sound forced in the process.
Ode To Melancholy ("***"): This song is incredibly bipolar. The first half of it goes between fast & slow rather frequently, with the tone of the instrumentation & singing changing just as fast. This also marks the first time in this album (At least for me) in which an orchestral accompaniment arises amongst the other instruments, despite a actual lack of an orchestra. Still, the illusion is impressive, and the title of this song is rather fitting to the overall tone of everything.
Lover's Grief ("***"): Of all the songs on Songs of Moors & Misty Fields, this one’s my favorite (With the last song being a close second). For one thing, this go for a much softer sound, despite many portions of the song having loud instrumentation. On top of that, Lover’s Grief has the most flute usage than any of the other songs, and I find it’s inclusion to be interesting. Finally, the lead singer for the most part keeps his voice toned down, and really conveys the feeling of grief, making this song all the more beautiful.
The Ensemble of Silence ("***"): We conclude Songs of Moors & Misty Field with my second favorite song off the album. As with Lover’s Grief, there’s a more softer sound with the instrumentation, and the singing in the beginning is incredibly haunting. The lead singer opts to whisper rather sinisterly, almost as if he was a ghost. Eventually, the song gets loud like in Lover’s Grief, but the singer keeps his voice low (For the most part). In the end, we have the guitar and drums carry us off into the dark unknown.
Overall Impression & Rating
Though Paganhearted from Vintersorg was a good release, I feel that Songs of Moors & Misty Field is a better album. It’s got a short but extra song, and the play time is much longer as well (20 minutes & 24 seconds from Vintersorg to Empyrium’s 44 minutes & 49 seconds). Plus, Empyrium is able to infuse it’s music with more folk elements, not to mention applying other aspects of metal as well. If you want your folk metal to have more depth, then buy this album.
Songs of Moors & Misty Fields gets a 9 out of 10.
See you all next time, when we’ll take a look at one of the more violent musicians to ever grace my blog. Until then, stay Otaku!
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