Ice Vajal :: Music Land :: Metal World
 
editorial :: feedback :: newsletter ::  
   Bands :: A-Z / T / Tverd /

On disc: Tverd



Follow The Sun's Way - Claudia Ehrhardt - 8 stars


www.tverd.com







Follow The Sun's Way

Follow The Sun's Way
(Wicked Music - 2009)


The man behind Tverd is Vetrodar who some know from Pagan Reign. Tverd was born in early 2007 and soon Vetrodar started to work on his ideas and finding mates to bring his music to life. The traditional instruments are played by Vetrodar while he hooked up with Svetlana Lebedeva who was the leader of the folk ensemble at Tver university and with tenor Alexander Ivanov who graduated at Gnesin's music academy. The right voices to make Tverd differ from other folk metal bands.

They lead you into this album with Wolf & Gyrfalcon, a folk-ish piece of music. Slowly they start, then they add some heaviness and the female vocals got replaced by Alexander Ivanov's voice. Later Svetlana Lebedeva joins in. The Russians take you onto a sonic journey. The Spring begins in a way like a classical composition, but becomes heavier, more metal soon. Vetrodar combines folk music, metal and elements of classical compositions in his songs and due to the trained voices Tverd distance themselves from many other folk metal bands. For Wide Maslenitsa they speed up a bit. Some elements have a progressive touch, but the folk-ish atmospheric sounds dominating. The up-tempo tune shows their Slavic roots, but might be interesting for fans of Korpiklaani and Finntroll as well. Due to the Russian lyrics the songs sound even more authentic. Tverd ease off for The Motherland's Heart which picks up some typical Russian sounds which they combine with spoken words. Then the song explodes, heavy riffs meet folk-ish flute sounds and bagpipes, the whole song is spiced up with Vetrodar's growls. An unusual combination which surprises the listener, but which works quite well. With ...Under The Sun's Magic Arrows they take you onto a trip into nature. This instrumental one has some neo-folk elements and it's very atmospheric, but the metal elements are reduced to a minimum. When The Steel Is Being Broken... is a folk metal tune which gets and epic edge due to Alexander Ivanov's vocals. At A Falcon Is Over Rus they again combine Alexander's operatic vocals with Vetrodar's growls which first sounds a bit strange, but as soon as you get into it, you'll really enjoy it. Later Svetlana joins in. After Epic Metal Cantata "The Bogatyr's Gates" they finish the album with the instrumental Russian Land's Sorrow.

In the booklet every track is a companied with a picture like the one they used on the cover. It's obvious that they put a lot of thought and musical vision into the album. Not a typical folk metal album, but if you like folk metal and pagan metal, then you should give it a try!


8 stars

Claudia Ehrhardt
 

up

           ©2008-2014 by Claudia Ehrhardt • E-Mail: contact@ice-vajal.com


Bands T