Hiltia

Let's do this track by track..
The "Intro" is a very nicely written piece of gentle folk music, but it simply to offset the harsh vocals that suddenly break in with the coming of "For Honour And Land". This track is unique as instead of mixing folk instruments and melodies with metal, they just switch back and forth between a fast-paced black metal sound and a gentler crooning voice accompanied by less frantic riffing. Then suddenly the flutes burst in and end the music, playing a little tune that quickly evolves into the fast riffing again. It ends with a bouncy guitar riff and flute melody together. The title track is next. "Hiltia" starts with a nice catchy melody with the flute, but overall sounds much the same as the second track. Black metal screams and grunts bursting with blast beats into gentle little folk tunes. The next track is a pretty straight up metal track, with only a small amount of acoustic picking in the middle of the song with some rather absurd sounding spoken/whispered parts of the song. The song never really picks up once this gentle interlude begins. "Furor Teutonicus" starts with some rather generic flute playing and soon becomes and rather catchy black metal song. The harsh vocals of the vocalist are somewhat lacking in skill or appeal. This song has one of the few guitar solos that aren't acoustic. The next track is a pretty folk piece that wouldn't seem at all out of place on a collection of medieval compositions. The next track is one of my favorites. Although it follows the same basic structure of most of the other songs with black metal and folk alternating back and forth it sounds a little smoother than the others. Better musical composition and less annoying vocals make this a real winner. The next track is also a pretty straightforward metal track with little folk influence at all. Sounds sort of like a primitive Opeth. Following is another black metal track with a seemingly out of place folk interlude at the end of the song. The next song has more clean vocals, which sound much better than the harsh ones. It has some of the smoothest transitions of the whole album. The "Outro" is another short folk piece that ends with some crickets and horse sounds.
Overall, the album is lacking in general feeling and has awkward transitions from one sound to the next. This general messy feel to it drops its rating in my eyes.