Keeping with the theme thus far for 2008 that folk/epic/whatever metal has set up camp in our collective pysche’s, here comes Heidevolk, a band that no doubt are the bottom-dwellers of this style. If anything, Heidevolk are a poor man’s Thyrfing, without the spirit and good songs, with Walhalla Wachtlosing steam right from the get-go.
Aside from the band’s very remedial riffage and hokey folk slant, vocalist Joris is the main drawback. Joris’ throaty, after-hours mead hall tone wears one down almost from the start on “Sakensland” and proceeds to get worse on “Koning Radboud” and “Het Wilde Heer.”
Some half-decent ideas emerge on the Skylad du-jour “Wodan Heerst” and the title track, but are quickly cancelled out by those wretched vocals and half-hearted riffs and instrumentation.
You can do much better than Heidevolk and to sit here and name what should be an innumerable amount of bands might be time better spent than withWalhalla Wacht, the veritable plankton in the sea of folk metal.
www.myspace.com/officialheidevolk
(This content originally appeared on Blistering.com)