In an effort spearheaded by the Ukrainian band Drudkh, eight different Folk Metal bands have come together to produce a compilation album. I’ve included a list of the eight bands below:
Drudkh (Ukraine)
Ava Inferi (Portugal)
Primordial (Ireland)
KAMPFAR official (Norway)
Winterfylleth (England)
Häive (Finland)
HIMINBJORG OFFICIAL (France)
Mondvolland (Netherlands)
Each band listed above has used music as way to link the listener back to their culture’s respective folk traditions and history. In this album, you’ll find that these bands have created their own unique way to represent traditional folk songs as well as the melodies from their musical heritage.
The Irish band Primordial has recently released a preview of their Dark Horse on The Wind on Metal Hammer (a song that will appear on the One and All, Together For Home album). Dark Horse on The Wind is a folk classic that is an ode to the pain of Ireland’s Civil War. Enjoy!
Most Relevant YouTube Comment: This band is “somewhere between Flogging Molly and Korpiklaani.”
Genre: Celtic Folk/ Black Metal
Lyrical Themes: Cultural heritage, struggle, history
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Primordial was originally a cover band that covered songs by Black Metal groups such as Bathory and Venom. But then they started performing their own Celtic influenced music. In terms of vocals this song has the organic simplicity of a punk, or Flogging Molly song. Yet this song still packs a punch with atmospheric, black metal instrumentals. While this song is pretty simple, it does convey the power of a primordial, ancient past.
Lyrics:
This is my church
It stands so tall and proud
It has done for all time
It has no walls
Yet its vast halls
Reach from shore to shore
To whatever shore
You know as your own
We stand as one, we stand alone
We are born
From the same womb
Hewn from the same stone
From the frozen Baltic
I watched sunrise over Athena
Walked the battlefields of Flanders
And saw duskfall at Cintra
Beneath the spires of Sofia
Fields of crosses at Arnhem
Armenius stood tall in Teuteborg
Senatus Populusque Romanus
To the fjords of Hordaland
Shadows of ancient Albion
At the shore of a 1000th lake
Saint Vitus dance in Praha
Yet when to Ireland we Return
I know that I am home at last
And every sun that sets
Takes me closer to her Earth
A tale of famine, 3 million dead and many more gone. One of Ireland’s saddest tales.
Genre: Celtic/Folk/Black Metal
Lyrical Themes: Cultural Heritage, History, Struggle, Paganism, Dark Romanticism
Origin: Dublin, Ireland
Primordial’s music has a simple but powerful aesthetic. There are no keyboards and flutes. Simply the power of voice, acoustic guitars and drums.
This is a song heavy with woe and grief. The history of Ireland itself is one of blood and tragedy. Between the years of 1845 – 1849 a great famine ravaged Ireland, outsiders call it “The Potato Famine”. The Irish call it “The Great Hunger.” Anywhere from 1 million to 3 million people died in this famine. Many of their youth left the shores of Ireland on ships to America. The Irish called these “Coffin Ships.”
This event was a dividing line in Irish History, after which many Nationalist movements formed in Ireland – seeking an escape from the United Kingdom of Great Britain. For you see, the British took much Irish farmland and used it for farming beef to export to Britain. Many Irish folk were pushed off their land and forced to contend with smaller plots. The potato was a crop that could grow abundantly on a small amount of land, so it became the food of the poor. Yet the poor became dependent upon it. Eventually a disease killed most of the potatoes in 1845 – resulting in “The Great Hunger.”
Metal Gaia 