METAL: Skagos - "Ast". NON-METAL: Wardruna - "gap var Ginnunga"

Today I decided to make my first foray into neofolk, a very strange and difficult genre to access. It is folk music with an industrial, experimental feel. It's often dark, ambient, and paganistic. It can also make for some truly beautiful and haunting music.

Wardruna's 2009 album gap var Ginnunga might have been just the album to introduce me to the neofolk sound. It combines all of the neofolk elements, acoustic instruments, vocal chanting, ambient sounds, into a cohesive, epic whole. They also throw in some creepy spoken word and throat singing passages that I sadly cannot understand, as they are in Norwegian.
The album has twelve tracks, but the music creates such a trance-like experience that it is hard to tell when one track ends and the next begins. It's almost like one insanely long and hauntingly beautiful song.

I will definitely be exploring neofolk more thoroughly, as of now.

9.2/10


Today has been a good day for consuming media.
Ast by Skagos. (2009)
Wow. What a fucking record.

This is black metal at its best. The greatest metal album of the year, and probably the greatest one I've heard from this decade. (Although I've only been listening to metal for a couple of months, I have been on a rampage. I've heard a good many metal records.)

This Canadian duo has created a record raw and intense, without sacrificing any of the emotive content energy. They transition seamlessly from long, beautiful acoustic passages to powerful, loud blast beats. Nothing feels out of place or forced, like in many lesser albums of similar genre.

I know that metal is not an easy thing to like, but this album transcends genre. It is absolutely beautiful. Please give it a listen.

10/10

I thank Damien van Vroenhoven at therockblogger.com for reviewing Ast. His music blog is constantly updated with insightful album reviews of many genres. He is much more eloquent than I when it comes to expressing his opinions. Go read his stuff.