I’ve been feeling the pendulum which constantly swings between my musical moods moving lately. I never really stop listening to either “heavy” or “light” music but I definitely have periods where my preferences swing heavily (get it) in a certain direction. For the last few months, it has been firmly in the “light” camp but I can now feel myself hungering for more aggressive music. Good thing I have an amazing network of friends who are constantly recommending music to me, so that I can hit the sweet grey spots between the two poles and transition easily between styles. This time around, Noyan happened to send me a track by a band called Furor Gallico, which had an album early in the previous year titled Dusk of the Ages and boy is it everything I need. Blending death metal and folk in a really cool way, Dusk of the Ages is giving me exactly the middle ground between hard and soft styles which I need right now. Head on over the jump to check it out!
“The Phoenix” does a pretty good job in showing you exactly what this band is about. The prominent violin is woven really well among the metal riffs, not quarantined to its own quiet passages but rather inflecting the rest of the composition to accommodate it. So too the various vocal styles, from guttural to ethereal, which are present on this track; the clean vocals work really well with the deeper growls, continuing to hit the themes and contrasts extant in the instrumentals. The more “common” stuff, i.e the guitars and drums for example, also does really good work, with multiple solos dotting the track and really punching its epic setting home.
You won’t find a lot of deviance from this formula on the album but then again, why would you want it? This is death metal done well married with folk music done well and, you guessed it, the end result is pretty damn sweet. So, if you’re hungering for this kind of metal and plenty of European folklore references (I mean, the cover art is literally The Wild Hunt) then look no further; Furor Gallico have pretty much brought this style into perfection.