(Century Media Records)
Total Time: 42:57
This CD seriously makes me want to suit up in armor and march down the street chanting. Turisas is classified as Folk/Viking metal and come from the almighty country of Finland. The band has enough instruments to start their own symphony, or maybe they have their own and just like to call it a war symphony?
Giving this a listen for the third or fourth time, I found myself asking - could it get any better than this? Turisas is right up there with the likes of Finntroll and Ensiferum, in this genre - though, this CD has even one more over Ensiferum; this CD is extremely unique at times.
It is damn near flawless. The recording is amazing, every instrument they used on this album shows they wanted you to hear it by never having anything being drowned out.
"To Holmgard and Beyond" is a proper beginning to the album, with an appropriately bombastic feel that really makes you think you're going on a journey, and Mathias gets to really show off his improved vocal prowess on this tune too. How he builds from perfectly clean to slightly raspy to full on yelling on the chorus is excellent. The chorus on this one will make you want to raise a horn of mead in one hand and a sword in the other--the gang vocals are better as well, really sounding like a hall full of Vikings raising their voices in song. "Cursed Be Iron" is a relentlessly bludgeoning number that is quite heavy by their standards and has a perfect headbanging feel to it, with Mathias screaming in rage over the price paid for forging iron into steel. His clean vocals aren't quite as good here as on the rest of the album, but he still is better than he was on "Battle Metal". The whole album takes you on a journey with ebb and flow, ups and downs, and it is hard to not listen to it all the way through every time.
If you like, Moonsorrow, Thyrfing or any other band of the genre, this is definitively for you. The epic keyboards, the battle-like atmosphere, the generic but powerful riffage, the ocasional feminine vocals, the folky fiddle sections... and those slight jazz influences, from a structural point of view, create a quite interesting listen.
"The Varangian Way" is an amazing CD and any fan of Viking or Folk metal should DEFINATELY have this.. Something I know this album should of had that i've heard from numerous Viking metal bands is the amazing usage of double bass kicking drums and blast beats. Even without those elements, this disc is still unique in more ways then imaginable.If you even consider yourself the slightest fan of folk/viking metal, buy it. If you consider yourself a fan of metal at all, at the very least, give it a chance...
