Not so very long ago DMB reviewed an album by an international Folk Metal collective called Folkodia. We scored the album, titled Battles and Myths, a 7 out of 10, liking the heroic/epic inclination of the songs. Over the past few days we’ve been in contact with Michaël, a.k.a. Saga, composer, guitarist, bassist and vocalist to the group. We talked about the band, how he joined it and how it works to write for a big musicians collective like Folkodia.

A little lesson in Northern Mythology: Fenrir was a son of god of fire Loki and Hrimthur (a giant tribe) Angrboda. Incest was a common good in those days, because the dude looked nothing like a human or giant, but like a humongous wolf instead. He was bad-tempered and ill-willed and so the gods thought up a plan to tie him up. After wolfman broke a couple of conventional chains they tried it with a dwarf chain. The chain was called Gleipnir and was made of six ingredients of varying questionable existence: the breath of a fish, the beard of a woman, saliva of a bird, roots of a mountain, the sound of a cat’s paws and tendons of a bear. Týr, the god of war, lost his right hand during the event as Fenrir bit it off.

There are more details to this story, but you’ll have to dig through Wikipedia for those yourself. They key message here is that Fenrir got pissed. And apparently he still is, because he’s still in chains. Must be looking for revenge. Long story short: cool title for a Death Metal song, an EP and a band: Wrath of Fenrir, all released last month.

After a bunch of shorter / smaller releases and a debut full-length called Breed Deadness Blood in 2008, Necrovation apparently finally developed an album worthy of their own name.

The band, from Kristianstad, Sweden, is active since 2003 and produces some very traditional sweaty armpits, beer and smoke Death Metal, a.k.a. Old-School! In a time in which Metal is heavily commercializing it’s a good thing some bands remain close to the roots of Extreme Metal. Necrovation (the album) offers a selection of nine songs of ear punishment in the traditional Death Metal way. Proper Swedeath!

Unfortunately this band is no more. Singer Ray-Ray snuffed it in early 2011 after overdosing on heroin. It really is a pity, as The Mayan Factor’s music is a real treat to the ear!

The band, from Baltimore, Maryland played a progressive sort of Rock characterized by the use of ethnic instruments and acoustic guitars, while still sounding solid and heavy. The main contributor to the band’s feel, in my opinion and based on listening to only a handful of songs, is the bass-acoustic guitar combination that creates immense depth. Over the course of the band’s career they released two albums; In Lake ‘ch (2003) and 44 (2005). Will serve up a song or two after the jump!

Credits to Rufio for directing our attention towards this group!

A good deal of time ago – we were writing October 2010 – I featured a band called Atrum Aequora in a little potpourri post. Atrum Aequora is a female fronted Melodeath outfit from Melbourne, Australia, and it hit the spot because of its contrast between female cleans and grinding, technical Metal.

Since that time the band has gone through a few line-up changes – guitarist-vocalist Adam Donnellan left the band for example – and worked on a new demo, simply titled 2012 Demo, on which Grinding the Remains, the song we included in our earlier post, is a recurring guest. Happy to give it a quick spin!

Sylosis, from Reading, close to London, UK, is most definitely my favorite band at the moment and most probably my favorite band of all time. Their optimal mix of technicality and ‘song-sense’ is like a supermodel licking my ear lobes.

I’ve played their 2011 full-length Edge of the Earth close to one billion times and it still manages to intrigue and entertain the hell out of me. The songs flow masterfully, choosing the path that works best, like a small stream flowing down a mountain. The result is generally as logical as it is unpredictable.

Anyfuck, huge was my happiness when I heard the Brits have a third album coming out this year. It’s called Monolith and it will be released worldwide on October 9^th. Ahead of that date, Sylosis has released two songs off the album yesterday. We’ve got these tracks, occupying positions 8 and 10 on the record, lined up for you past the jump.

We have an album by a band called Folkodia. That, of course, spells but one thing: Folk Metal! And loads of it dear kids! And the fact that the record is called Battles and Myths gives plenty of hints as to what direction this Folk Metal tends to: the heroic and epic type!

Folkodia is apparently a spin off from this massive international Folk Metal project called Folkearth. That means not all of the countless musicians from Folkearth are involved. In fact, only a fraction is: I count only 13 members on Encyclopaedia Metallum, though only 10 are listed on the album insert. In any case, small band, NOT!

So many bands have named themselves after some thing or another from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. By now it would be easy to dismiss most of them as a bunch of unoriginal bums.

Whattamistakadamake in the case of Italy’s Ephel Duath. Named after the mountains surrounding Mordor, they’ve been dealing weird sorts of Progressive “Post-Black” and Avant-garde Metal since 1998. The group started out as a two-man game and is the brainchild of guitarist Davide Tiso and has released a small stack of full-lengths since. They must’ve done something right, because through time they managed to grab the attention of bassist Steve DiGiorgio, whom we should all know from such great Metallic names as Death, Testament, Iced Earth and Autopsy, who can now be heard on the band’s latest effort, a three song EP called On Death and Cosmos.

Also on board are German-born drummer Marco Minnemann and female vocalist Karyn Crisis, also the wife of Davide Tiso and seen with him on the band pic below. Recently the group moved to Polish label Agonia Records and On Death and Cosmos is the first release to be aired through this relationship.

When You Scream is a five-headed Melodeath outfit from Osnabrück, Germany. The band formed in 2010 and consists of Chris (guitar and backing vox), Daniel (guitar), Matwey (vox), Michael (drums) and Sven (bass). So much for the band facts we managed to collect.

WYS delivered an album called The Alchemist in June of this year. Though not 100% sure, it seems this is their debut. The game is Melodic Death Metal, that’s all it says. Anyway, we took it for a spin.

Progressive Metal these days, at least the sort that flies into my inbox, seems to be more about chugging a la Meshuggah than anything else. In other words, it’s all turned into this thing called Djent. Or at least that’s my modest impression.

Wings Denied isn’t all that different. They call themselves a Progressive Metal band and they’ve got plenty of down-tuned guitar jamming going on. But for once they’ve got something that isn’t just a bad copy of the above mentioned Swedes. ‘Progressive’ is a stupid name any way. It suggests the band in question completely redefines the Metal genre. Such is not the matter with Wings Denied, but neither is it with 99% of the other bands that call themselves Progressive. However, they do play themselves a decent piece of Metal that cuts out their own distinctive sound.

Awake, a three-song EP, is the recently released evidence of that. Independently released and downloadable on a name your price basis through Bandcamp you ought to give it a spin.