Schandmaul - Knüppel aus dem Sack (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Medieval Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 10 Jun 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Here's another medieval folk metal album, which means that you're already fairly presuming that this band are from Germany. They're based in Munich and the four male musicians also play in the rock band Weto, with the keyboard player from Regicide. There are two female musicians too, who add notable textures, especially given that Birgit Muggenthaler-Schmack is responsible for all the shawms and bagpipes. They both have their own side projects too.

Between them, they cover a heck of a lot of musical ground on what is their eleventh album. I have no background in their work and failed to tackle Artus, their previous album in 2019. I'm absolutely sure that they've changed their sound over time because there's far too much on offer here to see anything else. Just check out the first four songs to see how they vary their formula massively.

Knüppel aus dem Sack is initially driven by metal riffs from Martin Duckstein and a solid beat from Stefan Brunner, but then Muggenthaler-Schmack sets the tone with bagpipes and Thomas Lindner spits bars in a raspy Teutonic voice. Köningsgarde gets majestic, as the title of King's Guard might suggest, but it bounces too with a bagpipe melody very reminiscent of ELP's Touch and Go and the anthemic chorus feels like Rammstein, as if we're somehow bringing prog rock and NDH together at a Renaissance Festival, especially once she shifts to shawm.

Das Gerücht is extra-playful, as if its depiction of The Court often focuses on a jester whom Lindner is more than happy to bring to life, down to fingersnaps and theatrical tease. We can just tell that there's a gleam in his eye when he's singing this one. When it's quiet, it plays with us entirely like Gogol Bordello do. When it ramps up, Saskia Forkert makes her violin prominent and it barrels on with folk energy. Der Pfeifer, or The Piper, continues in that vein but with a focus on melodies from a recorder alongside audience participation, whether hand clapping or dancing.

The rest of the songs here tend to play in one of those approaches, most frequently folk metal that often drops into rock. As that might suggest, it's relatively light, always focused on melodies from Lindner's clean voice and Muggenthaler-Schmack's bagpipes without any intention of bringing in a harsh voice or a crunchy back end. The traditional instruments, not just the bagpipes, but also the accordion Lindner plays when not strumming an acoustic guitar and the violin and hurdy-gurdy of Forkert, aren't there to sneak in a spotlight moment but to shape the songs throughout.

That's clearest when they drop out of metal entirely, such as on Der Quacksalber, which is all lively drums, fingerpicked guitar as a backdrop and a tender fiddle as a solo instrument. It's easy to see Lindner sat on a tall stool in a pub singing this one while we all either twirl our partners about the room or stand there and tap our feet. The same goes for Luft und Liebe after it, which kicks off as a calliope song only to liven up and then quiet down with Matthias Richter's bass replacing those guitars and a flute replacing the violin. This one shifts back up into the folk metal approach when it wants though, because that's never far away.

It's hard not to like this immediately and emphatically. There's technical wizardry going on and all these musicians are very capable indeed, but at heart it's just music to dance to, as medieval music tended to be, and that's the only criterion it knows it wants to nail. That lighter mindset is where it may divide people, because most folk metal, as if I might dare to generalise that most versatile of genrese, has far more crunch than this. There's a personal nature to this sound, as if the studio is unnatural territory to them and they would much rather just play this music to half a dozen of us as we walk down a grassy road. And that's fine. I appreciate that mindset, but I still feel like I want a little more crunch.

Tanzwut - Die Tanzwut kehrt zurück (2021)

Country: Germany
Style: NDH/Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 28 May 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

The more I explore the joyous genre of folk metal, the more I learn how some countries take it in very different directions. Case in point: the Germans, who mix it with entirely home grown genres such as the medieval folk of Corvus Corax, the medieval metal of In Extremo and the NDH of Rammstein and Oomph!, which often leads it into industrial territory too. Tanzwut grew out of Corvus Corax, initially being a sort of side project from members of that band, but they're a heavier band most of the time.

They're certainly a heavier band on the title track which opens up the album, as they probably should be, given that Tanzwut means "dance rage" and so this one is The Dance Rage Returns. It's varied, the quiet moments featuring what sounds like a harpsichord, but mostly it's an up tempo romp that can't fail to get your toes tapping, at the very least, with the back end driving it forward, bagpipes lighting the way and Teufel's vocals ringleading the whole thing. There are seven members in Tanzwut at the moment and five of them contribute pipes at points. Two only play pipes and shawm.

Feine Menschen does an even more overt job of shifting between quiet moments and emphatic ones. This one goes electronic, pleasant keyboards noodling behind Teufel's rough but clean voice, but then it launches into high gear, everyone joins back in and we're back to heavy again. I like how they shift in intensity, but that's not their only mode.

I don't speak German, but Bis zum Meer, which Google Translate tells me means To the Sea, feels like a timeless singalong classic. It doesn't play with intensity much, but it feels right and I'm sure this is one that will seriously invoke audience participation when gigs open back up. Pack doubles down on what this brand of folk metal does, courtesy of fellow Germans Saltatio Mortis, who have their own brand of medieval metal. It starts out like it's going to be a western film soundtrack, though the bagpipes soon put paid to that idea and our toes get hyperactive once more.

That's four songs out of four that change up the sound at least a little and the fifth is different again. It's Die Geister die wir riefen, or The Spirits We Called, which is unusual in many respects. It's not rock at all, let alone metal. It's a folk song that delves into gypsy punk and cabaret, strongly featuring an accordion. It's another lively toe tapper but it's a complete departure, even though Teufel's voice has all the grounding the song needs to be identifable as Tanzwut. That's a heck of a range.

And, with that said, I don't need to run through everything else on the album. There are crunchy NDH numbers and quieter folky pieces. There are songs entirely driven by bagpipes and others that play in a more keyboard-driven vein. There's a lot here and, if anything here piques your interest, you should check it out. You'll find yourself diving into a rabbit hole that also contains their eleven albums, going back to 1999, and a whole slew of other bands too.

What I will highlight is Virus, which is the album's closer a dozen tracks in, because Tanzwut surely left the best for last. In some ways, it's the album in microcosm, because it crushes at the outset but then gets sassy, with some winking talk singing from Teufel. It's choral and it's orchestral. It gets retro with sections I'm used to in steampunk, where the song sounds like it's being played through a Victrola. It's heavy and tame and quirky and pretty much everything else. It's a grand way to wrap things up.

Falconer - From a Dying Ember (2020)

Country: Sweden
Style: Folk/Power Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 26 Jun 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I'm all for bringing unrelated genres together and many of my favourite albums of all time fit into an unlikely such combination. Somehow I've never quite been able to buy into Falconer's combining folk music and heavy/power metal into something that clearly isn't what we tend to think of as folk metal. They've announced that this is their final album, so it's a last chance for me to get on board.

The band are heavy, but clean. The drums are often fast, though the guitars rarely follow suit, content to play along with power chords and slower riffs. The vocals are clean too, notably so. Mathias Blad is deliberately as clear as he can be, his enunciation right out of musical theatre where the vocalist tells a story and it's important to follow his every word. However, with the exception of sections where he's accompanied by solo piano, like the ballad Rejoice the Adorned or the intro to Fool's Crusade, which are musical theatre through and through, what Blad sings is more akin to mediaeval folk music.

As such, I've often thought of them less as folk metal and more as minstrel metal. Songs like Redeem and Repent or Bland Sump Och Dy drop into wandering minstrel territory so deeply that I visualised individual artisans in the background. This is unmistakably folk music, but it's just as distant from a Korpiklaani drinking song as it is from a a Fairport Convention ballad. What's more, because Falconer tend not to follow the typical folk metal approach of incorporating traditional instrumentation into their sound, they're arguably closer to the Mediæval Bæbes than the mediaeval metal of In Extremo or Saltatio Mortis.

I should emphasise that they don't eschew them entirely, but everyone in the regular line-up plays a traditional rock instrument and the guests are used sparingly. Sure, it's hard to miss Pontus Nilsson's bagpipes on Thrust the Dagger Deep or Mathias Gyllengahm's fiddle on Rapture, but they're not lead instruments and it's a rare instrumental, like Garnets and a Gilded Rose, that even attempts to fully integrate them. And so it's a strange sound to me, like the wandering troubadours at any Renaissance Festival if only Les Paul had gone electric in the fifteenth century and Tony Iommi had joined him.

It didn't help that the most catchy power metal song here, the opener, Kings and Queens, is hindered by some clumsy scansion, and I've never been much of a fan of musical theatre vocals. It could be said that I'm really not the target audience for what Blad does, but he does it so well that it's hard not to be won over in the end. I can acknowledge that, scansion in one song aside, Falconer do what they do very well indeed and yet I can still not be a big fan of the style they've created.

Redeem and Repent moves back and forth capably between mediaeval folk and heavy metal and it's my highlight here, I think. I particularly like when it drops out the latter to a capella former, because it's always a surprise for me, however often I replay it. I also dig the Shakespearean theatrics of Thrust the Dagger Deep, backed with simple riffs, Deep Purple organ and a frequent backdrop of bagpipes, plus a fresh drop out of metal into a capella folk.

Even if this isn't my folk metal, I can respect that Falconer do something that nobody else does and they do it very well. If you're a fan, add another point to my rating.

Saltatio Mortis - Für immer frei (2020)

Country: Germany
Style: Medieval Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 9 Oct 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

There's a song by gypsy punk masters Gogol Bordello called American Wedding whose lyrics begin "Have you ever been to American wedding? Where is vodka? Where is marinated herring? Where are the musicians that got the taste? Where's the supply that's gonna last three days? Where's the band that like fanfare? Gonna keep it going twenty four hour!"

That sprang quickly to mind here because Saltatio Mortis, those German purveyors of fine folk metal since the year 2000, have a new album out and they're exactly who I'd have booked to perform live at my wedding, should I have won the lottery to pay for their airfare. They're the musicians that got the taste and like fanfare. I'd have ventured out onto the dancefloor myself, because even my notoriously uncoordinated feet can't not move to this music. That's a good thing because the band's name means "dance of death" and, according to Wikipedia, their motto is, "He who dances does not die."

If I'm counting properly, this is their twelfth album and their incessant beats are backed up by driving bagpipes with no end of folk instruments that only start with hurdy-gurdy, bouzouki and shawm. This band have more energy than any half dozen random punk bands and they know exactly how to get our feet moving, our head banging and our voices singing along, even if we don't have enough German to buy a beer during Oktoberfest. "Was ist ein vaterland?"

I've heard a few Saltatio Mortis albums in my time and I've never been disappointed by them. They've moved forward a lot since their early days, to the degree of a rapped vocal on Mittelfinger Richtung Zukunft, but that progression is perhaps best highlighted here in Palmen aus Stahl, which starts out like it's introducing a rave and quickly leaps into NDH territory, an engaging mixture of Rammstein and your favourite Renaissance bagpipe group (hey, Tartanic). Again, I don't know the lyrics (Palmen aus Stahl apparently means Palm Trees of Steel), but I was singing along anyway in words that may or may not have approached the real ones.

Palmen aus Stahl is a highlight, but there are a bunch of those. My favourite may or may not be Loki, but Linien im Sand is right behind it and then the title track and Palmen aus Stahl and Löwenherz... maybe the whole album is a highlight. OK, a few listens in, I'm finding a few songs starting to fade a little, but there isn't one duff track on offer and there are fourteen of them here, if we count the instrumental intro, Ein Traum von Freiheit, which is as evocative as anything else here, if even more Celtic. It's almost the definitive stage intro and it leads directly into the punky Bring mich zurück.

The first eight songs in tandem are enough to leave someone of my advancing years breathless, so it's probably a good thing that the band calm things down after that. Rose im Winter is a solid ballad, all rough but heartfelt and with a neat drone behind it. Factus de materia is an old school mediaeval folk tune, sung in Latin with multiple chants and performed for the most part with hand held drums; it's a demonstration that folk music isn't just for genteel scholars because this one kicks ass and I could see the steins swaying during choruses. Seitdem du weg bist sounds like an acoustic take on pop punk and that continues as the album heats back up again.

After that three track break, Saltatio Mortis kick right back into high gear with Keiner von Millionen and they stay there until the album's done. These final three songs have pop sensibilities, as indeed a number of earlier songs did, but they're still bursting with energy and they kick serious ass. It's just a reminder that, while this band are fairly categorised as folk metal, even if Metal Archives still hasn't opened their door to them, they cast their net widely and trawl in all sorts of styles to transport into the futuristic mediaeval mindspace that they've pioneered. And that keeps them as fresh as ever. Now, about that wedding...

In Extremo - Kompass zur Sonne (2020)

Country: Germany
Style: Medieval/Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 8 May 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | VK | Wikipedia | YouTube

The last "medieval metal" band I reviewed, Cantus Levitas, are from Germany, and so's this band, because it's a big genre there. In Extremo weren't the first such band, as they were preceded by both Corvus Corax and Subway to Sally, but they've been around for a quarter of a century now and I'm a little shocked that I haven't noticed them until now.

While they started out with acoustic albums, this is high energy folk metal kind of like your favourite Renaissance Faire troupe covered by Rammstein. I remember the Mediæval Bæbes doing a great version of Salva Nos but it didn't sound remotely like the one here. I have no idea how many of these songs are originals and how many centuries old compositions, but it's telling that, if it's a wild combination of both, they fit very well together here.

Maybe I need to dive deeper into the languages used, because while it might seem that the songs are all in German, they likely span a slew of languages. According to Wikipedia, In Extremo have sung in at least sixteen others and not just the obvious ones like English, Latin and French, but others that I haven't even heard of like Ladino and Occitan, not to mention Old High and Middle High German. Salva Nos certainly isn't in German, being in Latin.

Similarly, they also play a wild range of exotic instruments in addition to those you might expect from a metal band. I'm not unversed in folk music so I'm well aware of citterns, hurdy-gurdys and shawms. However, lead vocalist Michael Rhein, usually known as the Last Unicorn, also plays darbuka, davul and binioù, amongst others, and I had to explore Wikipedia to find out what they are. The former two are drums and the latter is a bagpipe.

The early songs here are powerful folk metal songs with strong melodies and they're drive by Florian Speckardt's decidely not mediaeval drumkit and the crunchy metal guitars of Rhein and Sebastian Lange, but with bagpipes alive behind them. There are currently seven members of In Extremo, four at least  playing Germany bagpipes and those of other countries. The first two songs are fantastic, Troja and the title track, but Lügenpack and Gogiya upstage them both.

Both up the energy levels even more, especially the latter. There's a lot of gypsy punk in here and I wasn't too shocked to find that Napalm labelmates Russkaja, who guest on Gogiya, are a Viennese band who describe what they do as "Russian turbo polka metal". Salva Nos is energetic too, if not to those degrees, but it's also the only song I knew before listening to this album, so it stood out for me alongside them.

Not everything is this up tempo, because it would be a wild album indeed if it was, and the songs that slow down and allow us to catch our breaths don't catch my heart in the same way. Biersegen comes really close but high energy just isn't everything that In Extremo do and there's a lot more to be found on this album.

Schenk nochmal ein gets neatly plaintive and Saigon und Bagdad gets quirky. Narrenschiff has a catchy backing chant of a vocal and Wer kann segeln ohne Wind features a severe but still beautiful harp, as well as a deep and dark guest vocal from Amon Amarth's Johan Hegg. Reiht euch ein ihr Lumpen has a Celtic groove to it, even though it's in German, and there's throat singing to kick off Biersegen.

In short, there's a lot here to enjoy and there's a lot behind it too, given that this is their twelfth studio album, four with this line-up. Discovery is a wonderful thing.

Cantus Levitas - Auf Grund (2019)

Country: Germany
Style: Medieval Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Jul 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Metal Archives | YouTube

Before I virtually leave Germany for parts unknown, I knew I had to review a medieval metal album because it's become a quintessential German genre and I love it. Fortunately Cantus Levitas released their new one last weekend, no less than seven years after their first, Schnapsidee, so that's what's up!

What's medieval metal, you might ask? Well, it's pretty much what you think it might be, folk metal that's either exclusively or predominantly performed on instruments from that era. Pioneers Corvus Corax are the former, playing only period instruments, not just bagpipes, shawms and hurdy-gurdys but some that I'd never heard of, such as buccina, riq and cornetto curvo. This band, like the Corvus Corax side project, Tanzwut, include modern instruments too, such as guitars and a full drumkit.

I'm not sure what the Cantus Levitas line up looks like nowadays because I'm finding conflicting information, but there are at least a couple on bagpipes and a whole bunch on percussion instruments. The pipers also play shawms and others sit behind drumkits or play assorted percussion. Tobi, the guitarist, also plays the davul, which I had to look up; it's a large drum that's worn and played with mallets, used most often in middle eastern music. Many band members play more than one instrument, whether the additional one is a flute or an accordion or a cittern, a medieval mandolin.

And, given all that, what surprises me is that they sound a lot more like a regular metal band than a medieval metal band, at least whenever the guitar, bass and drums are in play. The bagpipes add a powerful drone over the top, and often a melody, almost like a keyboardist might provide in a different setup. Other instruments tend to wait for gaps to be heard.

Another surprise is that, for a band from the landlocked towns of Karlsruhe and Heilbronn, there's a lot of material here about water. Out of thirteen tracks, at least four are nautical, if Google Translate is being honest with me: Sieben Meere is Seven Seas, Flut is Flood, Altas Undas is High Waves (in Galician, for some reason) and Ferne Ufer is Distant Shore. Flut, the first song that really sold me on the album, is bookended by swirling waves. After all, the album title, Auf Grund, translates to On Reason, but the cover art features jellyfish. Yeah, if there's a metaphor here, I'm not seeing it.

Flut is the fourth track and it's sort of medieval Rammstein. The prior three songs weren't as overtly familiar and the following one, Aus dem Leben, my other favourite here, is a heavier song led by a powerful guitar riff that may have an NDH flavour but a more traditional heavy metal one too, with a few drum fills that hint at power metal. Of course, the bagpipes make for a very different sound overall, as they tend to do for any metal album.

The track that I'd most like an explanation for is Al ardu alqahila, partly because that's clearly not German; partly because it's an instrumental intro to Karges Land that carries a very middle eastern feel to it; and partly for the reason that I can't translate it, though "alqahila" is apparently Hausa for "penis". Why a German medieval metal band is using a Muslim Nigerian language to talk dirty, I have no idea, especially on an instrumental, but I really dug the music.

With the exception of that trio of very different tracks, which perhaps not coincidentally appear together on the album, I found that Auf Grund faded a little too much into the background. It's certainly long, at almost an hour, and it took a couple of listens to keep my attention. Fortunately, it gets better each time through, especially as that fresh focus enables different sounds start to leap out from different tracks.

After a few times through, I enjoyed the Sabaton-esque vocal line in Karges Land, the intricacy of In die Flammen and the kick up your heels dance tune that is Ferne Ufer. I dug the acoustic flavour during the first half of Windkries too, a folk song led by an accordion. It's a real singalong song, or at least it would be if I knew enough German to understand it. The title means Wind Circle, I believe, but what that is I have no idea.

In short, Auf Grund sounds good immediately (hello bagpipes, my old friends) but it's a little on the long side and it's easy to lose focus, especially on a first time through. Persevere; it's worth it.