Finntroll – Natten Med De Levande Finntroll (Spinefarm Records)
Sunday, 13th July 2014
Helsinki’s Finntroll, one of the world’s giants of folk metal have been releasing albums since 1999, to the delight of their fans around the globe. A band that has endured peril: death, illness and a complete lineup change to the original roster, they’ve maintained their rollicking and boisterous, foot-stompin’, goblet-clangin’, jig-inducing style of heavy-but-folksy Finnish myth-metal (with lyrics sung in Swedish, of course).
In their career, so far spanning six studio albums, Natten Med De Levande Finntroll (Night with the living Finntroll) is their first ever official live album. The recording, a concert performed at The Melkweg in Amsterdam, took place in November of 2008. At that point in the band’s career, they were pulling material from their first four albums (their latter two having released since then). Finntroll, a large band consisting seven members utilizes a combination of a three-guitar plus keyboard attack, or a doubling up of each instrument (utilizing a keyboard/guitarist who flips axes as required). As such, their sound is thick with melody and march. Decidedly mid-tempo material, as one would expect with metal of this persuasion, headbang friendly grooves abound with plenty of double kick action that likely leads to a frenzy of jig-mosh exuberance from the longhaired minions.
Sound-wise, everyone is present and the recording sounds of excellent quality. Nothing seems amiss or awry. With a bit of the usual crowd interaction between songs, tracks are edited (for the listener’s sake) to remove any unnecessary dead time. A concert containing an hour and nineteen minutes of material, Finntroll fans can’t go wrong with this one…if live albums are your thing.
