...Over Old Hills

Don't let the cover art fool you, fellows; this isn't a Summoning rip off like I'd hoped for, but straight out power metal, er, poofter metal, uh, pagan/viking metal. It's a genre that I'm not really well versed in, but like its' equally-fruity-but-less-blasty cousin that's europower it definitely seems like a genre that can be pleasantly consonant yet still retain some epic and inspiring qualities when done right. Something that just forces heroic virtues and stuff down your throat, while not being completely lame.

Of course, like many of those practitioners of fruits flowery, inspired moments are few and far between; both in the genre as a whole and in this album. There's some nice moments here and there- the multi layered man vocals (shame about the rather powerless screams), the occaisonal cool sounding sad 'n' mellow bit, even the occaisonal decent sounding riff. Naturally, for every inspiring bit there's a lot that falls short.

The synths is a pretty obvious one. The riffs aren't really terrible, just really lacking in power- I'm definitely reminded of Summoning's Dol Guldur in some of the long, sorta droney tremelo riffs that are going on here, with a bit of Forefather and maybe later Bathory in some of the more "aggressive" sections. Not hugely inspiring perhaps, but not a bad thing; it's just that they're surrounded, nay, enveloped in these big cheesy string synths, which aren't well programmed, have no dynamics at all, and for the most part lock in with the guitars to the extent that the whole thing's rather monophonic. Synths are cool, for sure, but only when they're mixed right and/or programmed well! It's perfectly acceptable if you just want them to provide backing, to flesh out the mix a bit more, but if that's what they're doing then just put them in the background!!! It's not hard!

In general, with the guitars playing fairly generic and weak black metal lite riffs (when they're present), the screamed vocals completely unremarkable and the synths sucking, things are generally left to the acoustics to keep things spritely and keep the PAGAN FIRE alive. I gotta give them credit- synth mixing aside, these fellas know how to make a mellow section, which is good because there's millions of 'em. They all have the whiff of a cheese and fruit platter, but they're probably the most competently played and definitely the best executed parts in the whole thing. "Our Kingdom is Rising Again" (nice intro, but a song with a REALLY hilarious battlecry in it), "Into the Mist", "Home of the Gods"... well, it's not great, but it's not awful either. Possibly the only band of it's ilk that could do a Kveldssanger and actually improve their output as a result.

This isn't really bad, but when the best thing is the sort-of-ok acoustic sections then something is badly wrong. Fruity, unremarkable guitars, paperthin screams, annoying as hell synths- decent but rare clean vocals- it's just not an appealing combination in anyone's language.