UMUR
"Ravnenes Saga" is the debut full-length studio album by Danish folk/death metal act Svartsot. The album was released in November 2007 by Napalm Records. Svartsot grew out of the ashes of the more black metal oriented Skoll.
The music on the album is folk oriented death metal. Sort of like Amon Amarth meets early Amorphis. The lyrics evolve around traditional Danish folklore and Nordic mythology. The lyrics are in Danish but honestly you could have fooled me as the growling vocals are processed and completely unintelligeble. It´s too bad as I´m sure more intelligeble vocals would have done the quite entertaining lyrics more justice. The predominantly mid-paced albeit energetic and melodic death metal is quite enjoyable though. The omnipresent flutes and whistles provides a happy folky atmosphere and are a great asset to the soundscape.
The 12 tracks are a bit one-dimensional and simple in style and therefore it´s greatly appreciated when the band does something a bit different and more epic in a track like "Hedens Døtre". By one-dimensional I by no means mean bad though. The quality of the tracks are consistenly high throughout the 46:01 minutes long playing time, but I still think a bit more variation between tracks would have made "Ravnenes Saga" a stronger album.
The Jacob Hansen production is powerful with an organic touch and suits the music well.
"Ravnenes Saga" is quite the entertaining folky death metal album and when the album ends I´m left with a smile on my face. As mentioned above there are a couple of slight issues with the unintelligeble growling vocals and the fact that most of the tracks don´t vary enough from each other, but overall "Ravnenes Saga" is still a strong album deserving a 3.5 star rating.