In the Sign of the Ravens

After releasing four demo tapes Mithotyn finally releases a full length album. Their first album In the Sign of the Ravens is nowhere near as great as their other two albums, although there is still a lot of joy to be found in it.

Like I said, they released four demos before this album, so about half the songs on here are from their demos, mostly from Nidhogg and their Promo 96. The songs that are new however are all pretty good. There are only about two songs on here that I can think of which some people might think are kind of bad, “Tills Dagen Gryr” and “Let Thy Ale Swing”. “Tills Dagen Gryr” is just a Swedish singing with a drum and minor keyboard over it and “Let Thy Ale Swing” is a keyboard type instrumental piece that sounds like a 64 bit piece of music, and that it would come off of a role playing game (or RPG) from the Nintendo 64. It reminds me of the time (ten years ago or so) when I played them so I actually liked listening to it. Others might get annoyed by the frequency of the keyboard that is given off by it however.

The Viking atmosphere is the best out of all their work hands down in this album. You can really pick it up while listening to the instrumental songs in the albums like “Lost in the Mist” and “Let Thy Ale Swing”. Rather it’s the excessive keyboard use or it’s the chorus they use, or the lyrics themselves, it all gives off great atmosphere. The vocals don’t help for that matter. They are kind of distorted and not as loud as the rest of the music, like the music is played louder than he is singing so you can’t hear him sing, especially the backup vocals, like in the song “In the Forest of Moonlight”.

The biggest problem with this album is that too many of you will get bored because of how repetitive it can be if you’re not a huge fan of this genre. If you’re a fan of the Viking/folk you know what to expect from this album, some long songs with some variation and harsh growing vocals followed by clean choruses. And that’s just what I have come to love from this style of music. However, if you’re not a huge fan of this style of music, you will get bored easily.

For the fans of folk or Viking music out there, you might enjoy this album like I have, and I would suggest that you look for it. If you don’t however, you might want to turn away from this one or the band in general, for this release doesn’t offer much new material to the table.

(Edit: fixed mistakes)