KORPIKLAANI
NOITA
Nuclear Blast Records
Ninth album for one of the most famous and beloved band in the folk metal world. Korpiklaani exploded almost ten years ago with three great albums (‘Voice of Wilderness’, ‘Tales Along this Road’ and ‘Tervaskanto’) that gave to them huge popularity, pushing folk metal on the top of selling ranks.
Then, four albums in four years with the automatic pilot: always enjoyable and funny, but just the same dish with few changes.’Noita’ (a sort of shaman in the Finnish tradition) is a little better: more varied and inspired, but essentially forgettable.
The traditional folk arrangements are more prominent and for sure well done, leaving heavy music just in the background; fascinating melodies and catchy choruses are still there, overall in the best tracks like ‘Lempo’, ‘Luontoni’ and ‘Ämmänhauta’, but there are also some useless filler like ‘Jouni Jouni’ or the ending track ‘Sen verran minäkin noita’.
All the lyrics are still all in Finnish: a brave choice, considering that is the hardest language in the world to understand and pronounce for everyone who is not born in the land of the lakes.
‘Noita’ flows well, is nice, somewhere energetic, somewhere funny, somewhere gloomy, but it’s nothing special. After four, five listening you will forget it.
An album that doesn’t add and take out nothing to the career of Korpiklaanni: it’s just a handful of songs to go on tour, having fun and drinking a beer. We can’t expect anything more.
75/100
(c) Dan Ross
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