review: Ensiferum

Ensiferum

Thalassic

Metal Blade Records

10 July 2020

Ensiferum continues to frustrate a particular type of fan. That means that the Finnish band is doing something right.

Here is an unproven hypothesis. Lots of people find out about Ensiferum through the YouTube videos. Those fans get excited about the video. They usually think the band is catchy. Now, given that today’s audiences, including metal fans, are conditioned to demand that musicians make all the songs similar, this band inevitably disappoints. “But I wanted all the songs like the video I watched!” screams the fan. That’s one problem. A second issue is that the band has been around a long time now. They began some 25 years ago, and their debut album is only technically still a teenager, and will soon be an adult. The band, being an old one now, has a section of fans that keeps wishing that they, like Cher, could turn back time to some so-called golden age, whatever album that may be in the nostalgic imagination of the (young, single) fan (now married with children) when they first heard the band.

To make a long sorry short, the Finnish band is on its eighth album. In 2020 they generally make fun, uptempo melodic songs with both singing and extreme vocals, and they like to spice up their albums with variety. Some songs sound like melodic extreme metal such as melodeath or “Viking” metal. Others may come across as true metal, epic heavy metal or power metal. The melodies make people bang their heads or dance like the Oompa-Loompas (“What do you get when you guzzle down sweets? Eating as much as an elephant eats.”). Some songs might be the equivalent of Finnish country, bluegrass, hillbilly, folk or “mountain bandit” music. Sometimes the band sounds like symphonic metal. Songs are fast, others uptempo, some are midtempo, some are slow. The band may make you think of a symphony or that you are at the local pub, eating pretzels and drinking too much, watching Aaron Rodgers be a baaaaaad man. Some songs seem like melodic black metal. Yikes, right?!

Of course, the band is frustrating to anyone that wants the Finns to write an album in which all the songs are of the same subgenre! The changes drive some people crazy. Imagine what’s going to happen when the band decides to make things even crazier by taking on the challenge of integrating a couple of styles within one song, and finding ways to transition from midtempo epic true metal then go into the blasting black metal? What are people going to say when one of these days the band will start a song with mountain hillbilly folk melodies and go into grandiose symphonic “Viking” metal? Just wait until they decide to write their own song to rival Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” all in Finnish. Anyway, for a band that angers some people, they also make lots of other people happy with their all-variety show that are their albums. On this new one they have written a tune that could close all their concerts until the day they retire. It is called “One with the Sea” and it is basically a true/power metal anthem of the anthems and it has no extreme vocals, only glorious melodic singing. Wow. Finntastic! (Yes. You too will feel an irresistible urge to demand more songs like it! This band is such a tease. But trust, friend, it is better this way. You wouldn’t want 10 songs just like it. Believe it.) Ensiferum is a roller coaster. Would you like to go on this ride? Just grab a little bag in case you start to hyperventilate. You will be ok. Promise.

Here is a challenge: Try listening to “One with the Sea” just one time, and see if you can stop yourself from listening to it on repeat for hours. You will fail. This reviewer certainly has.

Thalassic by Ensiferum