Arathorn - Treue & Verrat

\r\nBasically only the name of this band was sufficiently enough to make me eager to listen to their effort. Arathorn was Aragorn’s father in Lord of the Rings and obviously for a metaller who is also a huge fan of Tolkien or heroic fantasy in general (including me), there is nothing better from a fine unification between our beloved music and lyrics about swords, dragons and legends of heroes. Of course in this case all the lyrics are written in german (except the track "Ragnarok") and only from the titles we understand that they are dealing with the saga of Siegfried and the epic poem Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs). \r\n

\r\n

\r\nArathorn (who must not be confused with the German thrashers with the same name) were formed in 1996 and since then they have released two demos and two full length albums, the "Niemals Kroenender Als Was Einst War" debut CD in 1997 but after that they disappeared and made a new appearance as a one-man project and eleven years afterwards with a new full-length "Treue & Verrat". The remaining member Skoll is responsible for drums, vocals, flutes and lyrics here combining neo-folk music with wishful remnants of the old black metal days. "Treue & Verrat" (meaning faithful and betrayal) lasts 38 minutes with strong neofolk elements mixed with acoustic and medieval passages and stilted singing while the use of the flutes give in addition a heathenism note to the whole. The keyboard layers are massively used lending to the music a note of plasticity but at the same time the compositions partially appear rather artificially stretched. The first track is acoustic. Guitar, flutes and clean singing, and no hint of metal! The next song, "Siegfried von Xanten (Kapitel I, II & III)" extends over twelve minutes and is divided into three chapters. Here there are moments of harsh and underground black metal in contrast to acoustic passages, medieval parts and clean vocals. "Hagens Verrat" wanders in the folkish paths, "Siegfrieds Tod" is again a pure acoustic song while "Ragnarok" is a nine minutes long song that tries again to unite limited black metal with traditional aspects.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nSo, what’s the conclusion? The truth is that I got really bored at some point! This album is more folk metal than black and while fortunately is not joyful at all yet it got very little moments that could draw your attention to the full before entering again into a sleep mode! The clean vocals sound almost pathetic and they can get really irritating. The music from the other hand lacks any energy or powerfulness and the heroic tale and death of Siegfried seem doomed into oblivion under monotonous structures of thin musical inspiration. If you are a black metal fan I’m sure that there are very little things in this album that could fulfill your vicious needs but if folk music holds a huge space in your heart then maybe you will find something here to like. As for me I will stick to the old Summoning albums!!\r\n

\r\n

\r\nVaso Prassa \r\n

\r\n