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Æther Realm > One Chosen by the Gods > Reviews > TheAbyssalArchivist
Æther Realm - One Chosen by the Gods

Proof that some ripoffs can work - 79%

TheAbyssalArchivist, June 8th, 2017

Æther Realm, whose name I will have to copy-paste an annoying amount of times in this review, rips of Wintersun. Just get that through your head now. They sound exactly like the first Wintersun album. Folky melodic guitar lines, backing synth, rough sort-of-high-range growled vocals...you get the picture. But instead of the Land of the Thousand lakes, Æther Realm hails from the least likely place imaginable, and my home state (begrudgingly): North Carolina. Yeah, these hicks from Greenville are trying to be Vikings. But do they pull it off? Actually...yeah!

This band sounds fine. Production-wise for a debut it's a lot better than one could expect. The guitars have a clear sound that is quite obvious in its Ensiferum and Wintersun worship. Melodies and harmonies are constant, and they have the epic sound we all know and love. Glorious power metal solos can be found all over. The groove in "Odin Will Provide" is just awesome. The drumming focuses on thrashing and blasting but shows a versatile side here and there. But there are definitely moments that don't work. The ending to "Hourglass" is just plain weird. The bass is almost inaudible in many songs. Sometimes the drumming can be too loud and bury the riffs in the production. The kick drum is obviously triggered, not that I have a problem with drum triggers but it's TOO obvious here. Sometimes constant thrashing gets boring. The title track is a bit meandering. The acoustics in the final track "Oak" could have been really good but come off as boring. Little things that prick at your mind here and there.

Vocally I think this album works fairly well. If you know Jari Maenpaa's screams, you know what they sound like here. There's some "gang" shouts here as well, such as on the song "Swampwitch", which by the way has an awesome melodic passage in the past thirty second. I wish this album had some more singing going on, but hey, you can only rip off someone else's work so many times, eh?

Æther Realm has a new album coming out and I'll definitely be listening and reviewing it. Four years in the making...and still sooner than the procrastinating snowflake that is Jari. This debut has promise despite being derivative as all hell. They do the Wintersun worship right. If North Carolina stopped thinking about who goes in what bathrooms and more about their musical output, Æther Realm could really go somewhere.