Over the years, I’ve reviewed such a wide spectrum of hard rock
\nand heavy metal that very little surprises me. I’ve listened to
\nNordic\/Viking metal with so much machismo that the CD jewel box
\ndripped it. I’ve listened to Christian death metal; I’ve listened
\nto Satanic death metal. I’ve listened to hard rock from countries
\nthat you wouldn’t expect to hear that kind of noise from.<\/p>\n
But “German folk metal”? Rammstein meets Jethro Tull? That’s
\nkind of what listening to In Extremo and their American debut disc
\nWeckt die Toten!<\/i> is like. Mixing electric guitars, bass and
\ndrums with medieval instrumentation might sound like a recipe for
\ndisaster, but this German septet not only pulls it off, but makes
\nit surprisingly enjoyable to listen to.<\/p>\n
Now, I should mention right off the bat that I don’t understand
\na word of German – and not a word of these songs are in English.
\nThe short description of the band and a few of their songs in
\nEnglish helps, but I wish there had been more for me to try and
\ncomprehend. I mean, these guys could be singing recipes for
\npancakes for all I know – not that it would matter anyway, ’cause
\neven though I don’t know what the hell they’re saying, that doesn’t
\nmean I can’t like the songs.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, I’m at a little bit of a disadvantage when it
\ncomes to talking about the individual songs on
\nWeckt die Toten!<\/i> – as well as signaling out the members,
\nwhose information was also written in German. (Maybe one of our
\nreaders in Germany can help me out here?) But music is indeed a
\nuniversal language, and the songs that are featured therein speak a
\npowerful tongue. Tracks like “Ai vis lo lop,” “Hiemali Tempore” and
\n“Pal\u00e4stinalied” all speak at the incredible power that can be
\nachieved with the merging of electric and acoustic instrumentation.
\nThe use of bagpipes and flutes on these 12 tracks is brilliant, and
\nit actually feels like this musical marriage is natural.<\/p>\n
What impresses me about In Extremo is that the overall sound of
\nthis combination is sincere. It’s one thing for a band to try
\nsomething new for commercial purposes. I may be totally wrong, but
\nI don’t get that vibe with this band. It truly feels in the music
\nlike this is their calling, and that the members are pouring their
\nsouls into these songs. Somehow, I don’t think you can fake
\nthat.<\/p>\n
\nWeckt die Toten!<\/i> is an album you might not pick up on first
\nglance, but all it takes is one listen to show you that In Extremo
\nare most definitely on to something here. They already have a
\nsecond album out in the States (which we’ll get to very soon);
\nhere’s hoping it does even a better job than this wonderful
\ndisc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6289],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-36536","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-in-extremo","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36536"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36536"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}