ELVENKING — Red Silent Tides (review)

ELVENKING — Red Silent Tides album cover

Album · 2010 · Power Metal

4/5 · 2011-01-03
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Red Silent Tides is Italian Folk/Power Metal act Elvenking’s sixth full length album and their first metal album since 2007’s The Scythe. It was released in 2010 and is the follow up to their 2008 effort Two Tragedy Poet’s (...And a Caravan of Weird Figures), a mostly acoustic release with few metal elements. That release was a one off, and Red Silent Tides is supposed to be the group’s return to their metal style. There’s just one problem with this for me, and that is that I found the previous effort to be the band’s second best release, only being topped by their debut album Heathenreel. I have always felt that while Elvenking are one of my favourite bands that their metal albums have progressively gone downhill in terms of quality, coming to an all time low on The Scythe, which remains the only release in Elvenking’s discography that I feel no inclination to own. Two Tragedy Poets was such a surprise for me when it was released, numbering among my favourite albums of 2008 and a part of me actually wished that Elvenking would leave metal behind and continue with the folk style portrayed on that album. Unfortunately they never intended that to be the case and so here we are with Red Silent Tides, which to say the least is a disappointing release when put up against its predecessor.

That is not to say that the album is bad, it’s not, far from it in fact. This release easily tops The Scythe and for the most part is a very solid album. The trouble is it has few real highlights that can be looked back on and think ‘this is one of Elvenking’s best songs’, and when there is a real downer, it really kills the record. For the most part these eleven songs are above average and what few true highlights it has are able to carry the album somewhere higher than the mediocre territory. Fortunately it only has one real downer in the form of the lead single, The Cabal, which doesn’t sound at all like the Elvenking I like. Of course Elvenking are a band whose albums all have a slightly different feel to them than the last did, and that remains true with Red Silent Tides, but The Cabal doesn’t really fit here to my ears. For what it is it’s a pretty okay song, likable even, if it was another band doing it, but the thing is this is Elvenking and the elements I look for in Elvenking are missing from The Cabal and its only redeeming feature is that vocalist Damna actually delivers some of his best vocals to date on it.

Negativity put aside now, let’s discuss what few highlights that Red Silent Tides has. The first such highlight is the opener Dawnmelting, with its aggressive folk metal intro, strong vocals and enjoyable chorus. This isn’t exactly going to appeal to those metalheads who don’t like commercialised sounds in their metal but for those of us that don’t shy from a somewhat easier sound it’s a pretty good song. What’s most of note about it and indeed most of the album though is that the Power Metal element of Elvenking is somewhat lacking on Red Silent Tides, making this very much a Folk Metal album. There’s nothing wrong with that, but fans shouldn’t expect Heathenreel Part II. The next highlight is Silence De Mort, again it’s somewhat commercial in its delivery but lyrically this one really appeals to me but they do come across as being equally as good as anything on Two Tragedy Poets or Heathenreel. There’s also some good lead guitar from guitarists Aydan and Rafahel in this one. Runereader, which is the fifth track is my next highlight. I especially like the frantic and symphony backed riffing that comes up in this one, which is unlike Elvenking have ever done before and the acoustic folk intro. Unfortunately another true highlight doesn’t come up until the album’s final track, The Play of the Leaves. I’m including this one because it’s one of the album’s best folk pieces and at times brings mind to the atmosphere felt on Heathenreel or Two Tragedy Poets. It is easily the best track on offer on Red Silent Tides.

Elsewhere the songs fall into an above average sort of area. Damn remains on top form vocally, but generally all the songs that I didn’t mention in the above section are good just not exactly notable enough to warrant a mention of their own, with perhaps the exception of The Last Hour with its surprising and almost progressive twists. I’d have included this song in the above paragraph if it didn’t lyrically sound like it could have been done by any random pop rock band. The other songs not mentioned all have their moments but unfortunately they just give me this nagging feeling throughout that Elvenking is going in directions that I won’t like, and I can’t say that I anticipate their future releases as much as I’d like to, which is a shame when masterpieces such as Heathenreel, Two Tragedy Poets and to a lesser extent Wyrd have firmly asserted their status as one of my favourite bands.

Overall it’s a solid release for what it is but its major fault is that I’m not entirely sure that all Elvenking fans will really like it. For Elvenking fans it could fall into a fans only territory even though I personally find it to be pretty good all things considered. That’s why I’d only recommend really big fans of Elvenking get this album, at least without hearing it in its entirety beforehand. But then there’s that 2CD version. That’s right, there’s a special edition of Red Silent Tides and it gives a huge reason to want to buy this album, because the special edition includes none other than the highly respected To Oak Woods Bestowed demo. I’m not going to review that demo here because I’m only interested in talking about the actual Red Silent Tides album, but talk about incentive to buy this album eh?