Elvenking - Red Silent Tides
Rating
RIYL
Blind GuardianKamelot
Stratovarius
Therion
Release Date
02/22/2011
Label
AFM RecordsTracklist
01. Dawnmelting02. The Last Hour
03. Silence De Mort
04. The Cabal
05. Runereader
06. Possession
07. Your Heroes Are Dead
08. Those Days
09. This Nightmare Will Never End
10. What's Left Of Me
11. The Play Of The Leaves
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This is my first introduction to Elvenking, so I cannot really compare this album to their older work, but from their press release Red Silent Tides follows the continuation of their folk-based melodic metal portrayed on previous releases. It’s tough to seriously review a record that is borderline cheesy. You can tell the band has the chops and their lead singer carries the band, but this sort of power metal is hard to take serious, but I will try my best. In general everything has a very “adventure metal” vibe to it. I want to fucking climb a mountain on my steed and slay some dragons while listening to this album!
As stated before the most impressive thing about the band is their lead singer. He has great range and coupled with the instrumentation it makes for an interesting listen. The first track, “Dawnmelting,” starts with some spoken lyrics akin to something out of The Lord of The Rings. The track consists of dueling guitars, and keyboard flourishes are abundant. The keyboards mix with the violins on many of the tracks to create a wall of sound behind which the guitars can do their thing. Elvenking makes good use of strings throughout the record. This can be seen as a nuisance by some, but they are only used to embellish tracks, and they don’t overpower tracks too much. The track “The Cabal” finds the band losing the folk elements and just going straight ahead with their brand of power metal. The rest of the record follows in a similar fashion; good guitar work and solid drumming. Speaking of guitars and drums, they accurately match the vocal patterns, creating really cohesive songs.
I haven’t really expressed my opinion on the record because if you don’t take the record too seriously it's pretty interesting. Would I listen to this on a regular basis? Probably not, but the band successfully creates an uplifting, if not intentional funny, record. This album has a grandiose feel to it, the lyrics are lofty, and the vocals are high, but if you feel like climbing aboard a Viking ship and slaying some dragons, then this should be your soundtrack.
--Corey Mack
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