Falkenbach – Tiurida

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The subset of the black metal genre that contains large amounts of folk influence attracts almost an entirely different audience from the majority of black metal, which doesn’t. Getting a black metal fan who doesn’t care for the folky stuff – like this reviewer, for instance – to admit that an album undeniably in that subgenre is a masterpiece takes a pretty special record. Tiurida, the fifth album by German one-man blackened folk act Falkenbach, is one such record. With pure folk songs plucked right off the moors like Where His Ravens Fly sitting right next to bona fide black metal tracks like Time Between Dog and Wolf, which recalls the best moments of both Enslaved and Wolves In The Throne Room, but with a bit more folk underpinnings than either of those bands offer. Even more brilliant tracks like the terribly-titled In Flames show the fusion of these styles, evenly dividing the sound between folk and black metal and showing a virtuosic mastery of both. This album is nothing if not fully committed, and sole member Vratyas Vakyas seems bent on proving that there’s a reason he took six years off since Falkenbach’s last album, the similarly fantastic Heralding – The Fireblade. Black metal with heavy folk influence has become extremely popular in the last three or four years, but Vakyas demoed the first Falkenbach songs in 1989. He figured this out first, and he doesn’t want anyone to forget it. Over twenty years into his career, he may have released his crowning achievement with Tiurida. It’s everything a black metal album should be as well as everything a folk album should be, combined into 45 minutes of total musical bliss. You won’t catch a true-blue black metal obsessive saying this often, but this slab of blackened folk is one of the best black metal albums of the last ten years.

Written by Brad Sanders
More: 2011, Albums, Black Metal, Folk Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Falkenbach