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| 78 listener votes for this album. |
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| Victory Songs |
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| By: | Ebonfire |
| Date: | 28 May 2011 |
| Rating: |
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Finnish viking/folk metal masters Ensiferum return with their third full length album “Victory Songs”. This album is the first full length to feature new vocalist/guitarist Petri Lindroos (ex-Norther) who replaces Jari Mäenpää, who left to form Wintersun.
Ensiferum start off with the introductory track Ad Victoriam, which has the usual epic qualities that you would expect a band like Ensiferum to come out with. Anyone who has heard the track Ferrum Aeternum from their previous album “Iron” knows what to expect here.
The second track (and the first true song of this album), Blood Is The Price Of Glory, comes in right away with a massive kick to the balls that you’re going to feel for the rest of the song, as this song starts off incredibly intense and doesn’t let up all. Easily one of the best fast-paced songs Ensiferum have ever written.
Deathbringer From The Sky comes next, and while it still stays along the faster route, it is unfortunately nowhere near as intense or memorable as Blood Is The Price Of Glory. This track just doesn’t really go anywhere for me, which is a shame.
Going ahead to Ahti, this song is a short piece about Ahti, who is the god of the seas according to Finnish mythology. This track also takes a faster and heavier route, but there is more of Ensiferum’s folk metal influences prevalent, which I feel mixes in well with the lyrical theme of the song.
One More Magic Potion is next, and this is definitely the most catchiest track on this album. On this song Ensiferum effectively combines folk and viking effectively to make what I consider to be the most fun and uplifting song on “Victory Songs”. Try listening to it and not feeling extremely happy at any stage of the song, that’s an extremely difficult task.
Track six is called Wanderer, and this is where we start to see Ensiferum’s epic side start to kick into action. This track is definitely the slowest so far (excluding the intro) but it also happens to be the most epic and inspirational song on the album. Ensiferum haven’t really done a full-blown epic song quite like this before (the closest is the first half of Lai Lai Hei or Finnish Medley) but this shows they’re obviously capable of such songs. I hope to hear more tracks like these from Ensiferum in the future.
Raised By The Sword comes next, and while this track returns to the faster side of Ensiferum’s music, I consider this to be a hit and miss track. It has its moments, but not enough of them for me to consider this to be one of Ensiferum’s better songs.
A New Dawn is another fast track along the lines of Blood Is The Price Of Glory, but definitely not as good. This song is still quite good on its own and likable enough, but it is by no means my favourite song on this album.
The final track on the standard edition of “Victory Songs” is called Victory Song. This song generally takes the same approach as Wanderer does, but it still incorporates everything you could want in a song like this. Victory Song is the longest track on this album at over ten minutes long but there’s no filler anywhere, just pure unadulterated epic metal.
On the digipack version of “Victory Songs” there is also a bonus cover song of Uriah Heep’s Lady In Black. Even though this cover and the original musically sound the same, what is most prevalent about this cover is how incredibly well the song mixes with the folk/viking metal that Ensiferum performs while also giving it a more metal edge. Anyone who enjoyed Wanderer and Victory Song will definitely enjoy this song.
While this album has a couple of less than excellent songs on it, I still consider this to be an excellent Ensiferum album. With the different types of songs on this album and the variety that offers, there’s definitely something here for everyone to enjoy.
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