viking metal / progressive metal
A fantastic and tremendously magnificent album to be released on September 1st by Downfall records, From North is the self-titled debut of the eponymous Swedish avant-garde metal group, that enters the underground scene in a marvelously aggrandizing and effective style. With eleven tracks – Volund The Smith, He Who Hates, Last Appeal, Ships Tale, Mead Of Poetry, Sworn Brotherhood, The Sacred Oath, Ormr Inn Langi, The Catch, The Longest Wait and From North –, this wonderful debut defies the norms and patterns usually applied to alternative metal, in favor of a more authorial and organic sonorous conception. Already in the first track, Volund The Smith, the listener is savagely, but spiritually introduced to a divine state of splendorous glory, where a brutal, but sophisticated musicality conceives an everlasting twilight of stone that draws the line of a genuine and accurately precise axiom of artistry. This grandiloquent atmosphere of an omnipotent parallel reality rapidly follows in the second track, He Who Hates, with a monumental melody that furiously dissipates the diagram of a sound impulse rotated by a diluted, but explicit viking ferocity. And this marvelous greatness continues intact until the final track.
With ferocious, but whimsically dilapidated guitar lines, and almost clean vocals – although incisively strong and harsh at certain passages –, From North is an exceedingly genuine band. With a style impossible to properly define or categorize, they wisely reunite and easily compress in a wonderful sonorous galaxy of creation several astute and intelligent elements from a lot of different musical genres: from hard rock to progressive metal, from alternative rock to speed metal, going through avant-garde, power and post metal as well, with occasional viking, folk and symphonic arrangements, From North is a pluralistic cosmogony of excellent musical eclecticism, that keeps on their audacious and virtuous authenticity the greatest formula for sensational creative abilities that has potential to highlight the band as a rising and prosperous act in the underground scene.
Exceedingly versatile and flexible, the strong musicality of the group takes the virulence of sonorous ascendancy to another level: with a melancholic icy poetry that rapidly shifts from a solitary, but aggressively reflexive rapture, From North comes to explode the musical possibilities to the highest degree, and explore all sonorous possibilities to a maximum, pursuing a perfect degree of artistry dying to be properly appreciated and recognized.
One song in particular, The Sacred Oath –, a camp folk ballad that warms the soul and heats the heart –, is a majestically monumental and sensible poetic anthem of faith, hope and tenderness, profoundly humane, protective and paternal, that calms the spirit, and sets the world into an ecstatic moment of reflection. A song that sings the everlasting quest of human beings for interior serenity, you instantly envisions in your mind a night around a bonfire in a camping site with close friends, with the eternal forest fulfilled by snow in the background. Although the entire album is gracefully fabulous and beautiful, this track is certainly my favorite. One of the most wonderful songs that I’ve heard in my entire life!
With absolutely anything to be criticized negatively about this album – on the contrary, I would massively suffer from the lack of adjectives to qualify this imponderable and masterful work –, From North rises from the distant icy landscapes of Sweden to defy the perceptions of our musical horizons, with their creatively exceptional and unconventional harmonies. I would love to wish them luck in their career, but they don’t need it! Their astounding beginning can be described in just one word: P-E-R-F-E-C-T!
Wagner
With ferocious, but whimsically dilapidated guitar lines, and almost clean vocals – although incisively strong and harsh at certain passages –, From North is an exceedingly genuine band. With a style impossible to properly define or categorize, they wisely reunite and easily compress in a wonderful sonorous galaxy of creation several astute and intelligent elements from a lot of different musical genres: from hard rock to progressive metal, from alternative rock to speed metal, going through avant-garde, power and post metal as well, with occasional viking, folk and symphonic arrangements, From North is a pluralistic cosmogony of excellent musical eclecticism, that keeps on their audacious and virtuous authenticity the greatest formula for sensational creative abilities that has potential to highlight the band as a rising and prosperous act in the underground scene.
Exceedingly versatile and flexible, the strong musicality of the group takes the virulence of sonorous ascendancy to another level: with a melancholic icy poetry that rapidly shifts from a solitary, but aggressively reflexive rapture, From North comes to explode the musical possibilities to the highest degree, and explore all sonorous possibilities to a maximum, pursuing a perfect degree of artistry dying to be properly appreciated and recognized.
One song in particular, The Sacred Oath –, a camp folk ballad that warms the soul and heats the heart –, is a majestically monumental and sensible poetic anthem of faith, hope and tenderness, profoundly humane, protective and paternal, that calms the spirit, and sets the world into an ecstatic moment of reflection. A song that sings the everlasting quest of human beings for interior serenity, you instantly envisions in your mind a night around a bonfire in a camping site with close friends, with the eternal forest fulfilled by snow in the background. Although the entire album is gracefully fabulous and beautiful, this track is certainly my favorite. One of the most wonderful songs that I’ve heard in my entire life!
With absolutely anything to be criticized negatively about this album – on the contrary, I would massively suffer from the lack of adjectives to qualify this imponderable and masterful work –, From North rises from the distant icy landscapes of Sweden to defy the perceptions of our musical horizons, with their creatively exceptional and unconventional harmonies. I would love to wish them luck in their career, but they don’t need it! Their astounding beginning can be described in just one word: P-E-R-F-E-C-T!
Wagner
