Kivimetsän Druidi

Kivimetsän Druidi is a Finnish band that has been active as a band that played a mixture of folk, thrash and heavy metal. After his first release Shadowheart, which was more a collection of songs he made in the five years before the album, the band now comes with the second full length album Betrayal, Justice, Revenge. This album shows what the band truly is. With elements of heavy, power, female fronted and folk metal it produces his own extreme fantasy metal.

The album opens with a calm intro that leads to the first song of the album Aesis Lilim, which is a heavy metal based song, with high female vocals and male grunts. The song that follows, Seawitch And The Sorceror, starts with a thrash metal body, but after half a minute the song switches to a more folk setting where the female vocals come in as well after a while. Like every folk band, the melodic parts are very catchy and harmonic.

With Manalan Vartija the band touches again another piece of music, creating another atmosphere than they did in the previous songs. With only five songs the band has shown he can be very creative and still be true to his own created sound. The vocals help here as well of course, but it is important to have a distinctive sound as a band. With Betrayal, Justice, Revenge the band really seems to have found his mark.

But the band doesn’t stop there. Betrayal, Justice, Revenge can use more variation and more folk influences, so the band has put in Tuoppein’Nostelulaulu, which has an even better catchy atmosphere than Seawitch And The Sorceror. The song ends with calm music in a really dark atmosphere. Near the end the album begins to sound a bit darker and heavier as well. With this I am really pointing at Of Betrayal. It has a bit of a doom feel to it or even touched by industrial music.

Desolation: White Wolf is a very good outro with a folk feeling and a solid heavy metal body. With this song and all the others I can’t conclude anything else than that Betrayal, Justice, Revenge is an album that contains all the elements Kivimetsän Druidi once played and is formed in the sound of the band himself. The diversity, power and creativity jumps right of the disc. There is an edition of the album with two more tracks and listening to the nine on the album I am really curious how these bonus tracks sound. Your money worth is equal to Betrayal, Justice, Revenge.

Read more: reviews