ENSIFERUM — One Man Army (review)

Album · 2015 · Folk Metal

3/5 · 2015-02-09
adg211288

One Man Army (2015) is the sixth full-length album by Finnish folk metal act Ensiferum. Ensiferum are probably one of the first few bands that come to a lot of metalheads minds when thinking of folk metal, but personally speaking though I love the genre I've never been more than a casual fan of their music, though I did end up enjoying their last record Unsung Heroes (2012) a fair bit. They're the sort of band I've been of the opinion that you can always rely on to get the job done, though they always will do it in their own way without really pushing the boat out. Amon Amarth are another such band.

The same is true regarding the sound of One Man Army, only this time it just all seems to fall flat on its face for me. I guess if you're a bigger fan of Ensiferum than I am then One Man Army is serving up exactly what the doctor ordered; folk/symphonic metal with a Viking aesthetic with mostly screamed vocals. But to me the album feels and sounds only passable at best. It's exactly what I was expecting in terms of direction but I know this band can do better. The album rarely manages to get my head nodding, blood boiling or even to put a smile on my face in folk metal style silliness during the course of its eleven tracks. It has its moments that remind me of why I took interest in the band in the first place, I quite like the album's title track for instance and Descendants, Defiance, Domination is also worth its own mention. The parts of the album which added some female vocals to the mix were nice too but for the most part One Man Army just passes me by without doing too much to make me sit up and take interest, which means it's neither overly good nor does anything excessively bad either. It's just there, with Ensiferum doing what Ensiferum do.

And perhaps that's the bigger problem with this one: it just seems to be Ensiferum by numbers and maybe that's just not enough for a new Ensiferum album to be even a little bit interesting to me, the casual follower, at this point having heard and enjoyed their last few albums to different degrees.

Or then again, maybe not. To me One Man Army's biggest problem is that while you will hear all of the folk, symphonic, power and melodic death metal elements here that make up the Ensiferum sound the mix of styles just doesn't seem to be utilised as well as on Unsung Heroes, which back in 2012 I described as a "varied approach to creating folk metal". I hear the different elements again sure, minus anything much I'd call progressive which is a description I applied to some of the last album, but the details don't come through so good to my ears and even when I do hear something a bit different out of the album it doesn't seem too much of a far cry from the norm. I do think that fans of Ensiferum will still like this album a fair amount though so far that reason most of all I'm going to settle on 3 stars for my rating but I'll personally be returning to Unsung Heroes next time I feel the need for some Ensiferum.