Review: FROM NORTH “From North”

FROM NORTH “From North”
Downfall records

Here we have a young (founded last year) band from Varberg. This city isn’t big, even as on Swedish conditions, and there live something like 35.000 people. It has quite long history – grounded in 1343, but its roots are in deeper past (at least one hundred years). So this is as clear as a day that there’re interesting places to visit to over there.

City has some meaning in culture of whole country. This is also about several kinds of music. However, last year five guys decided to play music together and so FROM NORTH was born. Some of these guys are really long time on the scene (both guitarists for sure). That’s why this is extremely hard (in my opinion this is mission impossible) to find some weak sides from technical point of view in music of Swedes. One who made their profile on EM used term Folk/Viking Metal to describe what they play. ‘From North’ is their first release ever, by the way. Well, I was never an expert of Viking Metal – especially which this term was always for me at least a little contrived. I can find some elements of Folk here. I doubt if this is Viking one.

Anyway, music is in middle tempo, but that’s far away from being calm. In my opinion this is good played and thankful Heavy Metal. Somehow I have no doubt about this even when I’m listening to ballads like “Sworn Brotherhood” or “The Sacred Oath” and also some slower parts of other songs. Riffs are heavy, powerful and variable of course. In general they’re just like it should be in Heavy Metal. But I can hear some far echoes of Mathias’ Death Metal past; also some other influences are hearable.  This is first of all about Thrash, I feel. You’ll also find some solos as well here. Robin beats energetically and ballsy – with quite huge participation of cymbals. This is all in middle tempo as well and in spite of appearances it happens a lot on this field. Well, I’m finding one more connotation with Thrash here. At least for me, Håkan’s way of singing, timbre reminds this sub-genre of Metal. This isn’t aggressive, quite often is even very melodic. He sings with clean voice of course, hoarse one very often. But there’re some short fragments when he almost growls.

To sum up this stuff is piece of good Metal music. Generally this is melodic, but in the same time I can feel energy and aggression here. Fans of Heavy Metal will surely like it very much! Guys with little exceptions (mainly on the beginnings of songs) use normal, typical for Metal instruments, by the way. Everything’s well played and created with imagination.