Lead - Not Follow

I'm a sucker for some good folk metal, and when the stuff is done right I find that it really leaves a strong impression on me. Bear in mind that I said good folk metal. This is straight-up bad. Most of it is poorly composed and it fails whatever goals it had, unless being one of the worst folk albums in existence was one of them. It never even reaches average.

The first thing that the band does wrong is with their use of the folk instruments. There's a particular way that they have to be inserted into the music, and that just isn't how Cruadalach do it. The pieces don't blend into everything in an accomplished way, more just of sound out of place. It doesn't help that nothing sounds like it is in the right key either, and it is kind of irritating.

So, when the main element of the band is already falling short of the mark, how can the rest of the instruments hope to make up for it? The answer is that they simply can't. Everything else is wrong too. The guitars thunder away in the background, but all they serve as is some background noise. In another band I'd say that they were providing what was needed, but here nothing else builds on it so it is wasted. Supposedly there's a bass in there too, but you'd be hard pressed to find it.

And of course, there are the vocals. Oh god, the vocals. There are two vocalists here, one guy with a higher voice that sounds incredibly whiny a lot of the time, and the other guy who occasionally does growls and has a deeper voice who is semi-bearable. The deeper voiced guy still not great, but I'd rather listen to him than his colleague. Every now and again a woman comes in as well, and normally I'd expect to find that better in a situation like this one. Eh, no. Here she is just as annoying as the two men, and I'm finding that irritation seems to be the one thing that Cruadalach can manage to make me feel.

Special mention goes out to the song Blejanje na mjesec for having the most annoyingly out of tune bagpipes I have ever heard. As a Scot I hear bagpipes every odd week, and I've had the misfortune of hearing some painfully off-key pipes in my time. But this? No, Cruadalach have taken this to a whole new level. The accompaniment of flutes and drums do little to aid this, and the female tribal vocals help to make this song the worst on this record. The whole of Lead - Not Follow is poor, but this song just tops everything else.

Seriously, it isn't worth listening to at all. There's no novelty to it, no enjoyment to be found, just a boring loop of off-key whistles and pipes and whatever the hell a shawm is. Just do yourself a favour and avoid this please. My review is the first, and I expect it to be the last.