Lupine Essence

Suidakra’s Lupine Essence is an enjoyable, though unpolished, debut of a band whose sound has not quite matured to its full potential. It blends elements of folk, melodic death, and black metal quite nicely, but suffers from a few flaws which are quite noticeable. I will start with the cons. Firstly, it sounds like it was recorded in a basement. This is not always a bad thing, but Suidakra is a band with strong emphasis on melody and therefore the raw sound does take a bit away from the beauty. The harsh vocals in particular sound like they were well executed, but the thin sound quality makes them sound a bit weak. The guitar solos tend to be similar sounding and repetitive, though they are not a prominent part of the band’s sound. The greatest flaw of Lupine Essence is the female vocals, which are some of the worst I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately she pretty much ruins Sheltering Dreams, where she does lead vocals, but fortunately only appears for a few seconds in sections of other songs. I assume she was supposed to sound soft and pretty, but instead comes off as weak and uninspired. She sings extremely high, to a point where she is just annoying and unpleasant to the ears. Finally, the intro and outro to Internal Epidemic do not seem to quite fit with the mood of the rest of the song; they are too happy sounding.

On the other hand, there are a lot of good things about Lupine Essence. The guitars pull off some very nice folkish melodies and harmonies, which can quickly but smoothly change direction into faster tremolo picked sections, or short bursts of dark, chromatic black metal. Instead of making separate songs spanning the three subgenres, Suidakra manages to blend them effectively into each individual song, for the most part, which makes things quite interesting. The drums may shift accordingly from mid paced beats into blast beats, and the male lead vocals are split between clean and harsh. The harsh vocals are decent black metal/melodic death raspy screams, but the clean are very well executed, maintaining a good tone but with an edge typical of folk/viking metal (Suidakra is technically Celtic). All of these elements provide a good amount of variation in each song, and there is prominent use of keyboards in some sections, particularly the parts that I would call the black metal sections. Another thing that stands out is the relatively prominent bass, which often plays its own melodies, such as at the end of Banshee. Every song on the album is pretty strong except for Sheltering Dreams, but the best are Havoc and Warpipes Call Me. Havoc is, for the most part, a dark, heavy, and aggressive track (the heaviest on the album), but has a beautiful folk section about halfway through with some great clean vocals. Warpipes Call Me is a slower track with almost all clean vocals, and easily the catchiest song on the album. It was redone on a later album, but the remake is significantly different and therefore not simply a better version of the original; I may actually prefer the original.

Overall, I would recommend Lupine Essence to fans of this breed of epic medieval metal, but it might be best to start with a different album if you’re just getting into Suidakra. There are some great songs on here, but too many mediocre moments for it to be a truly great album overall.