Beschreibung
www.tartareandesire.com = 8,5/10 points: A sterling example of how Russian metal has finally caught up with the West in terms of pristine sound production and mixing, Follow the Sun’s Way is also fundamentally as good as pagan/folk metal gets. Tverd harnesses a panoply of different styles of riffing and vocals, from power chords to tremolo picking for the former, and Vintersorg-like baritones to black metal screams for the latter, not to mention haunting tandem female vocals. The folk instrumentation is similarly varied, lush and well-considered, from mandolin and bagpipes to flutes and domras (look it up, foo’). It all coheres brilliantly and all the more so for a debut album, even though Tverd is ostensibly a continuation of band leader Vetrodar’s ten-year, four-album sojourn with Pagan Reign. No matter the semantics, this is great stuff that is bound to be enjoyed by fans of Tyr, Primordial, Skyforger, Borknagar, and In Extremo, ranging from the casual to the manic. I’d advise a bit of tightening with respect to song lengths, not to mention English translation for the Cyrillic lyrics, and I don’t know what the hell they were thinking by ending the album closer’s moody folk instrumental with some breakbeat-laden techno mess that defines anachronism to a tee. Bad, Vetrodar, bad!
written by Matthew Kirshner