Review: Furor Gallico “Future To Come” [Scarlet Records]

Since 2007 Italians Furor Gallico advance their own vision of folk metal consistently, mixing brutal riffs and extreme vocals with some various folk instruments. Now, after five years they finally release their fourth album named Future To Come.

“While Future to Come cannot be considered as a concept-album, most of the songs are based on the idea of physical and spiritual redemption. The listener will be thrown in a multifaceted world where every song is one of many scenarios – from epic and apocalyptic landscapes to the inner reconciliation with ourselves and the Earth – each unique in its style and yet well balanced, so to take him on a journey through life’s sorrows and deliverance,” stated in press release and Future To Come is really good in terms of storytelling: a lot of instruments used here to tell the story and deliver a message to the listener, creating some emotional rollercoaster from time to time, which is also great.

The last album, Dusk of the Ages was released in 2019 and since then musicians really grew up with their playing techniques: melodic solos from Gabriel Consiglio interspersed with his brutal riffs while Davide Cicalese took his vocals, both extreme and clean to a higher level. There is also a Celtic harp, tin whistle and violins can be heard in this album together with bouzouki, a relatively rare music instrument for the folk metal bands, who use Celtic, Irish and Breton tunes in their music. And of course I need to mention Valentina Pucci here; she was responsible for all female vocals on the previous album and we can also hear her singing in Future To Come. Her vocals are exceptionally good at slow paced “Birth of the Sun” and the main “Future To Come”, where her sad, melancholic tone fits the mood of these songs greatly.

However, if we will take just the music, without reading the lyrics (ok, I admit, I have some problem with extreme vocals’ listening comprehension), the picture will not be so rosy. In my opinion, the main problem here is that “folk” and “metal” are not interwoven in Furor Gallico‘s music but more like they go in parallel. For example, the harp, violins and tin whistle sound great, with beautiful melodic line. At the same time, the brutality of guitar riffs and low extreme vocals seem like from another universe. Female vocals in choruses, which is contrasted with male one sounds too melancholic and sad sometimes. Nevertheless, I need to say it one more time, technically musicians did a good job and some distinct lines can be admired easily, like a great “dialogue” of guitars and folk instruments in “Ancient Roots” or melodic guitar solo in “Among the Ashes.” But it was really hard for me to enjoy the whole picture. In this case, “Faith Upon Lies” was indicative for me: it starts with some folk music and then an avalanche of riffs and growling crashing down. In the end it should be some folk melodies with death metal riffs and theoretically it could be an interesting mix but I couldn’t get rid of sentiment that the band haven’t decided what exactly they want to play, folk or death, because the metal element here is too overlapping.

In the end I want to emphasize that Future To Come is not a bad album, quite the opposite! It has many interesting moments and lots of folk’ish melodies. Maybe the band’s songwriting approach is different from what I personally got used to and what I expect from folk metal. Or maybe it’s just a regular human desire to show everything that you’ve got, what you’ve learned and how did you grow as a musician. Especially when the previous album was released five years ago and it’s pretty long time. So, whatever it is, Future To Come is worth listening, especially for the fans of a genre.

Future To Come will be released on March, 22 via Scarlet Records.