Tracklist:- Symbols
- In my Sword I Trust
- Unsung Heroes
- Burning Leaves
- Celestial Bond
- Retribution shall be Mine
- Star Queen (Celestial Bond part II)
- Pohjola
- Last Breath
- Passion, Power, Proof
- Bamboleo (bonus track)
Ensiferum stand as a flagship at
the forefront of folk metal. Over the
course of their decade-and-a-half existence, their records have helped export
the genre from Scandinavia to the heathen masses in Europe and America. Unsung Heroes, their fifth full-length
release in that time, may just about be the most anticipated of the lot. On offer is a tale of war, death, and
redemption, a blast of bombast, and much more besides.
True to its remit, Unsung Heroes
gives pride of place to the rip-roaring aggression expected from
battle-hardened Finish blasphemers.
This appears, first of all, in the form of a rousing glorification of a
heroic battle with the alien values of Christendom. From the call to arms, in track 2, In My Sword I Trust, follows
the eulogy to Unsung Heroes in track 3; thence moves the album onto the brutal
thirst for warfare with track 6, Retribution shall be Mine. Taking a stand against injustice and
oppression, no matter what the odds, is heralded above all else, as stated
plainly in track 2: “Brothers, it’s time to take a stand”. And the hero held aloft is the warrior of
the past, fallen amongst “Unsung heroes/Forgotten valour/Unknown soldiers”.
The premise of these themes lies
in notions of honour and duty based on physical strength and emotional
resilience. And its reflected in the
music, from martial snares and horns to the strong, driving rhythms and
impassioned growls of a warrior hoard.
Swept up by a sea of testosterone, these themes are carried from the
backwaters of resistance to the borders of a genocidal bloodbath. “Arise my brothers, we are blessed by
steel”, and the warriors are summoned and challenged: “Do you have the might/To
eat the putrid flesh” (In my Sword I Trust).
A fight to the end is in sight, as the warning, “I’d rather die than
show you mercy”, is crowed in cruel anger in track 6, Retribution shall be
Mine. Even in the following track, the
relatively laid back ballad, Star Queen, comes the maxim “It’s better for a man
to die by the sword/Than wither away with undying love”. That sizzling you can hear, that’s spunk
dripping onto hot metal.
The overriding impression
Ensiferum give for much of the album is one of unending battle: “Only the dead
ones/Have seen the end of war”, as is proclaimed in the title track, Unsung
Heroes. But somewhere along the road to
unrestrained slaughter, they got sidetracked by conflicting emotions. These crop up throughout the record,
offering respite and reflection to the weary, a bit of oestrogen to calm all
that manliness, if you like. In
particular, tracks 5, Celestial Bond (the only female-voiced song of the
record), 7, Star Queen, and 9, Last Breath, lower the tempo and upend the
war-wagon, as the stage is given over to clean vocals and sparser
instrumentation, with gentle guitar picking and light strings taking the fore.
This isn’t all aesthetics,
either. As the music slows, the lyrics
come to reflect on the limits of the unbounded masculinity earlier established,
and, for the first time, some vulnerability is offered. In part, this is based on physical weakness,
a reconsidered look at the bravado of war displayed before, as shown in track
9, Last Breath. Sung in the honest,
clean vocals of a natural growler, this records the dying thoughts and fears of
the mortally wounded: “I close my eyes/Has it all been in vain?”
More broadly, however, the
vulnerability displayed in these tracks reflects an inability of the would-be
hero to shape his world. On the one
hand, this means the inability to fulfil and control the self, in both emotions
and aims. Admission of failure is
given, therefore, by the lilting feminine tones of track 5, Celestial Bond,
which yearn, helpless: “When will time heal and fulfil the dream of my
heart?” In track 7, Star Queen, there
follows a human admission of love, in cracked and rough male vocal
melodies. In the same song, the lyrics
attempt to disavow the concept of love (lyrics quoted above).
However, what gives these
reflections of human limitations their power is not their humanity at all, but
rather a recognition of mankind’s powerlessness in the world which surrounds
it. The broken heart of track 5,
Celestial Bond, submits herself to nature, as it surrounds her, lying,
“mesmerised by the rolling tide”, by the shore, as she offers her wish “high to
the stars”. Throughout, a beleaguered
humanity is confronted with the incomparable vastness of nature: “Every man’s
horizon can change/But eternal skies will always stay the same” (track 10,
Passion, Proof, Power).
But this relationship between
humanity and its surroundings is, nevertheless, somewhat ambiguous, as is
demonstrated by the recurring theme of the passage of time. Imprisoning humanity within it, time is
inescapable: fallen warriors are “now buried in time” (track 3, Unsung Heroes),
while men must wait out their lives in hope that it delivers their wishes (“For
a thousand lifetimes/I will wait to feel”, track 5, Celestial Bond; “Longing
for the moment for eternity”, track 7, Star Queen). Yet time itself is the only guarantee of success for an endless
historical mission, as proclaimed in track 10, Passion, Proof, Power: “Through
dark centuries/The wait for the time/When all is revealed”.
As with the temporal, the
physical world which surrounds humanity is more than just its master. It is its true, eternal partner, journeying
with it, and sharing its fate. The
heart, bewitched by the Star Queen, thus reflects on his heavenly infatuation
as one “Born in the stars, like all of us”.
And, poignantly, the fate of man is reflected upon by the fate of nature
itself, most clearly in track 4, Burning Leaves, which equates the apparent
failure of the fight against imposed religion through the image of a dying
tree: “Burning leaves/Dead branches reach to the sky/The flame within me/Is
gone”. As various fans have commented, this may be an incarnation of the ancient
mythological Norse symbol, Yggrasil, and clearly reflects on the pagan
influences on Ensiferum.
All this still leaves some ambiguity as to the overall
ideology of the band, however. While
calls to arms invoke the monster of tyrannical religion, they embody as much
the spirit of contemporary atheism as of pre-modern native peoples. Throughout Unsung Heroes, the power of
“reason” and “truth” is upheld, nowhere more clearly than in the final track,
in which no lesser authority than “the gatekeeper of the knowledge” is quoted:
“To know is your destination/To find is your possibility/And to search is your
quest”. On the one hand, the nihilistic
ideal, of ruthlessly destroying distortions of “truth” until nothing else
exists, is embodied in a strong, anarchistic trend, which is threaded through
the record. Arms, regardless of
excesses in testosterone, are to be taken against “tyrants”; freedom,
ultimately, is to be found in liberty from both tyranny of faith and of man,
with the lyrics, “I am, you are, no one’s slave/No man or god they have made”,
closely resembling the classical anarchist maxim, “No gods, no masters”.
Yet, for an anarchist manifesto,
Unsung Heroes might be considered somewhat dependent on a number of religious,
or quasi-religious, concepts. In
particular, whatever “truth” involves, it has a finite and transcendent quality
which runs, unaltered, through history.
The notion of a future age “When all is revealed” (track 10, Passion,
Proof, Power) hinges on the idea of a teleological path to history, ending with
the ultimate fulfilment of a predetermined human mission – something explicitly
laid out in the advice of the “gatekeeper of knowledge”. In fact, while toying with a number of,
seemingly conflicting, ideological premises, Ensiferum find themselves rooted
in fundamentally theistic philosophy, in which nature, as an embodiment of
“truth”, substitutes the gods, leading humanity on to its destiny.
Whatever conflicts may exist in
the lyrical themes, however, Unsung Heroes is an album skilfully tied
together. While each song can easily
function as a stand-alone track, the running order suggests an unfolding tale,
beginning with the ancient heroism of the original warriors against Christ,
ultimately lost in time (tracks 2, 3).
As the loss of the original dream is lamented (tracks 4, 5), it is
nevertheless resurrected, in the form of a new search for truth and liberty
(tracks 6, 7), before ending, once again, in the death of its seeker (track
9). Having been brought full circle,
the continued struggle is promised anew by the defiant final track.
All this provides a solid basis
for a much more than solid album. And
yet, having constructed this detailed – if somewhat unoriginal – musical
tapestry, the band’s attempts to illustrate an authentically folk album feels
all too much like a desperate attempt to do everything at once. Guitars, bass, and drums, are, of course,
admissible: it’d be a mighty strange metal band without them. Full orchestral backing, perhaps, might also
be excused: certainly, they add colour and expression to the music. As to the booming church organ, which recurs
on numerous occasions, leap is beginning to get stretched. By the time rasping, space-age synths slice
their way into the picture, in Passion, Proof, Power, they’re
enough to transform the soliloquy of a pagan gatekeeper of eternal truths into
Darth Vader summoning legions of cosmic startroopers.
The impression, that Ensiferum
might not really have sussed how to approach their own material, is only
strengthened by the final twenty minutes of the album. Faced with a sober and serious subject
matter, the band evidently decided to lighten the mood, introducing a bunch of
comedy Germans midway through Passion, Proof, Power, who greet the news that
Ensiferum and Fintroll “from Finland” are playing at their favourite medieval
tavern with unrestrained delight: “Ja wunderbar!” Regardless of their attitude to religion, this apparent anomaly
falls straight like a shit from the heaven of an spiteful god. A shame, therefore, that it wasn’t an
anomaly at all, but rather a prelude to the eternally awful bonus track,
Bamboleo, a bizarre choice of cover, styled after Turisas’ colourful novelty
version of Rasputin. Evidently no-one
mentioned that, once copied, a novelty ceases to be novel. Well, now we know for sure.
It’s a slightly unfortunate, if
thankfully minor, tendency within the album, which is visually illustrated by
the official video to their first single, In my Sword I Trust. Standing, like Nordic lemons, in front of
the camera, it almost seems like Ensiferum don’t quite know what to do. In the end, they splatter it with a bit of
artificial dirt and splashes of fake blood.
That’ll do nicely. Amid the
plastic, you’d almost forget that specialist musicians were brought in to play
Finish folk instruments.
And yet, for all these little
absurdities, Unsung Heroes ain’t half bad.
Ensiferum have been able to fit a booming soundtrack to a pretty
well-developed plot, which runs in a smooth and deeply satisfying chronology
from start to finish. For all the
curiosity of a symphonically-backed band of pagans, the music is finely
detailed and, even if not the most technically complex, well-varied throughout. They even tempered their Nordic aggression
with a fair dose of measured femininity.
That, if nothing else, is worth a mention – I’ll congratulate them on it
when they arrive to sack my village…
Production: 4/5
Lyrics: 4/5
Album Cohesion: 5/5
Music: 7/10
http://www.ensiferum.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment