Band:	Dyrathor
Album:	Sacred Walcraft Of Hel
Style:	Pagan folk metal
Release date:	June 2010

01. Sacred Walcraft Of Hel
02. Memories In Frost
03. Im Auge des Sturms
04. Ariovist
05. Und ewig rinnt das Blut
06. Ode an die Heimat
07. Kampf auf Samsey
08. Thumelicus Secutor
09. Entspringe den Fesseln
10. Wudana Wittekina Waigand

Most of the time I'm not very happy when I receive folk metal albums for reviewing. It seems natural to me to be prejudiced about an album titled ?Sacred Walcraft Of Hel" as well (note that walcraft wasn't a typo, it's in the actual title). On the other hand Black Bards Entertainment has sent me a really good folk metal album before in Heathen Foray's ?The Passage" so they might have cherry-picked some goodies from this generally lackluster genre again.

And indeed it turned out that Dyrathor's debut is a very pleasant piece of blackened folk metal with quite a bit of Equilibrium-worship. Although they're always staying within the boundaries and cliches, they managed to write some diverse songs and even to stamp some personality on them. Most of the time their music seems pretty chaotic with some calm interludes. The vocals are mostly screeched, barring a couple growled and semi-spoken/clean passages and they have their own violinist on board too. The lyrics, in German and English are just the standard folk-fare about war, the absolute evil that is Christianity, etc, you know, the usual.

Even though they aren't reinventing the wheel, far from it actually, ?Sacred Walcraft Of Hel" is a good album. Although the songs are simple, they are well-played, varied and enjoyable. The only thing that bothers me on this release are the clean/spoken passages, those are rather bad. By the looks of it the band members are all very young, but the band has already been very active in the area of giving concerts too. It wouldn't surprise me if we'd be seeing the name Dyrathor a bit more often in the future.