Huntress: Win a Pair of Tickets to Paganfest 2012 @ Gramercy Theatre on March 31st

Win a pair of tickets to see Huntress at Gramercy Theatre on March 31st. The band is playing on the Paganfest America 2012 tour, which features Turisas, Alestorm, Arkona and Huntress.

Drop me an email at Mike.BrooklynRocks at Gmail Dot Com with the subject "Huntress Tickets" and a winner will be chosen at random. Be sure to include your first and last name in the email as tickets will be at will-call.



Huntress was birthed in the underground of Highland Park, California, clawing at the roots of heavy metal. Lead singer Jill Janus is an operatic banshee with an unparalleled four-octave range and lust for the occult. Born and raised in the Catskill Mountains of New York, she toured Europe as a teenage opera starlet. Upon her return to the States, Janus embraced Manhattan nightlife, creating Felliniesque cabarets and parties in a nihilistic club scene. Years later, Janus moved to Los Angeles and began the gestation period of Huntress. In 2009 she met underground metal band Professor. The universe spread her legs and delivered Huntress to Janus, combining former members of Professor, Dark Black and Skeletonwitch.

The powerful pentad signed to Napalm Records in November 2011. They unleashed their first music video for “Eight of Swords” in October 2011, directed by Simon Chan of Artificial Army. The song was produced and engineered by Chris Rakestraw of Sunset Lodge Recording in Silverlake, CA. Rakestraw will also produce their debut album, slated for release Spring/Summer 2012 on Napalm Records.

Links:
Huntress

Adorned Brood - Noor CD Review (Black Bards Entertainment)

German pagan metal band Adorned Brood has been around since 1994 but I hadn’t heard the band until the release of their current album Noor. This is the band’s sixth full-length and it is out on Black Bards Enterainment label.

I’m not that familiar with many of the bands in the pagan/folk genre so I really don’t have the background to make any comparisons about Adorned Blood’s sound. A few years back, a buddy took me to a pagan metal show at Highline Ballroom and, honestly, most of the bands didn’t leave any sort of lasting memory. I’ve given Noor a few plays and really enjoyed the dichotomy between with folk and the metal-core aspects of the disc.

Adorned Brood uses traditional folk instruments like the tin whistle, flute, accordion and string to complement their crunchy power chords and blast beats. The band has six members, including female co-vocalist Anne, so there is a lot of interplay between the vocals and instrumentation within each of the disc’s ten songs. The songs range in style from the moody (almost horror movie soundtrack) “Intro” to the hard-driving, pounding drinking anthem “Noor” which combines screamo, snarled vocals with clean choruses and melodic chanting. One of the other stand-out tracks is “Sons of the Damned” which is stylistically similar to “Noor” but it includes more of the traditional folk instruments along with an instrumental piano break. There are a number of other breaks in the songs which include elements of power metal and prog rock, all of which kept me actively engaged as a listener. The disc wraps up on a strong note with the foot-stomping (mosh-pit inducing) “Drunken Sailor”.



While the majority of the vocals are sung in German, I don’t think this is an impediment to enjoying this disc. Most of the songs sound like battle anthems which transcend all language barriers. Noor makes it obvious that that Adorned Brood would be a lot of fun to see live in concert.

Links:
Adorned Brood

Eluveitie - "Everything Remains (As It Never Was)" CD Review (Nuclear Blast)

Looking at some recent folk-metal releases, Swiss folk-metal band Eluveitie released Everything Remains as It Never Was (Nuclear Blast) earlier this year. This is the band’s fourth full-length and third album in three years after signing with Nuclear Blast in 2008.

I haven’t listened to enough folk/pagan metal bands to have a true sense for the genre but I’ve been left with the impression that a number of band in this space have a renaissance/operatic sounds that falls somewhere between Blackmore’s Night and recent releases on Cruz Del Sur. Eluveitie’s last disc Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion (2009) fell directly in line with this assumption as it was predominately an acoustic affair with vocals by hurdy gurdy player Anna Murphy.

Everything Remain as It Never Was breaks from this premise and has some real metal teeth. Chrigel Glanzmann handles most of the vocals with a death metal growl and there is some vocal interplay with clean vocalist Anna Murphy. Murphy contributes lead vocals on “Quoth The Raven” and, on this track, she adds a death metal growl to her range. There is a nice interplay between the vocals and the music which is complemented by Colin Richardson’s crisp production work.

The disc starts and ends with the spoken word intro and outro from Dannii Young, which sets the stage for the Celtic themes of this disc. Musically, the melodic metal blast beats are balanced by traditional folk instruments like hurdy gurdy, flute, bagpipes and whistles. In addition to the spoken word tracks, there are two acoustic instrumentals “Tsara” and “Setion”.

The first video from the new disc was for the song “Thousandfold”:



Eluveitie just finished a tour with fellow Swedes Amon Amarth and here is a video from the show at Irving Plaza:



Links:
Eluveitie

Windfaerer: NJ Folk Metal Band Post Two New Songs on their MySpace Page

DOWNLOAD: Windfaerer - "Glorybound" Demo

New Jersey folk metal horde Windfaerer -- M. Gonçalves [Vocals, Guitars, Bass], JP Andrade [Percussion] and Valèek [Violin] -- recently posted two new tracks to their official MySpace page.

"These Walls (Frozen In Time)" and "This Beautiful Death" (which features bagpipe work by Sevan Kirder, formerly of Eluveitie) come off the trio's debut full-length, Tribus. Tribus was recorded and mixed at Frightbox Recording (Clifton, NJ) by Bobby Torres and follows the band's two-song demo "Glorybound", released last year to mass underground accolades.

Said main songwriter Goncalves of the new tunes: "Tribus is in essence a collection of everyday themes set in a time of Iberian legend. The songs touch upon rebellion against Romans in ancient Hispania and Lusitania, expansion to new lands, as well as voyaging into the unknown. I'm excited about the way everything sounds and how it all came together. I've had this vision for a while and it's almost euphoric to be able to finally realize it!"

Links:
Windfaerer