"Folkemon"
Nuclear Blast
By Vinnie Apicella For a while there I really thought they were at the end of their "Old Rope." Did they lose their spirit? How longs it been since we heard from these guys? Well judging by the opening tune, they haven't been sitting around too many campfires singing folk songs while waiting for their next wave of inspiration. Speaking of which, get a load of the title-yes, it's a parody on the Folkemon craze which if I were still eleven I might be able to comment on more deftly but in the current position I find myself in being a full grown nut, I offer nothing further. Telling however in that Skyclad's been one of those elusive of bands that does their own unique brand of Jethro Tull-gets-the-short-end-of-it with-the-Devil music that blends rambunctious recollections of enchanting metal imagery into tall tales of rhyme, reason and wisdom. The Walkyier led clan seems in good spirits and in full control of their convictions on stuff like "The Great Brain Robbery," which deals the hosing down of free-thinking and public progress while "Think Back and Lie of England," brutal and brilliant speaks coarsely of the almighty skeleton dancing wildly in the closets of the closed minds. So far this is a storming comeback record-which it should be looked as considering their last was somewhere around last year. okay so we're coming up a little short on this end of the shore I guess but wait a minute, they did change labels right? I never realized they did anything since. "Prince of the Poverty Line?" Wow, that's going back a ways-classic record by the way. This looks to be their ninth or tenth and apparently it is a return of sorts, to the more aggressive nature from years past-the folksy tradition's still there, owing much to their clever lyrical focus, pint-lifting choruses and unprecedented use of an electric violin which is where the extra dose of wayward flair enters the picture-mildly majestic, wholly imaginative built on fact-based fictional-like accounts without the wild storylines. Yet somehow I can easily hear them screaming "My Kingdom for a Horse" loudly in the background long after this ends. In any sense, I like what I'm hearing and I'm glad they haven't softened up their sound or their stance. One of the more colorful and poignant groups ever to bear the cross for ours or any generation of metal stalwarts past, theirs is an ongoing ten year legacy that continues to grow as tall as the fields of the countryside. |
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