Paganland
Wind of Freedom

Pagan metal, pagan metal sung in a slavic language is what ukrainian band Paganland has to offer. Wind of Freedom is their first album which cannot quite be described as a breeze of fresh air, the band has been around for a while but only managed a demo and a split before this release. I cannot say that I am very attracted by slavic languages as a lyrical component in a song, it is a group of languages that isn’t musical. Still it seems like many of the russian band that find their way into my playlists are singing in those languages. Still, I never let my prejudice (if I have any) cloud my judgement of an album.

Pagan Metal, folk metal or something like that. It is power/black metal with folk music influences, quite large usage of keys and fairly low key guitar work that often falls into the mixture of everything else. I think the mixing could have been better. The vocals is another achilles heel for this band, the vocalist is not very good and the language he sings in isn’t good either. The album itself is quite varied and creative, it has many angles that are interesting and they show some really skilled musicianship as well as song writing. They also keeps things short, that I like.

But the album is a bit of a mixed bag to me, it is quite clever and good on one hand but then on the other it is sung so badly that you want to cry at times. But the thing is, for most parts you can overlook the vocals and focus on the music and the music is good. I think this band has a lot going for it, but they just cannot quite nail it and the question is if they will ever quite nail it as it probably requires finding a new vocalist, hiring a skilled person to produce, mix and master the album and it also requires that they change the language in which they sing. I think this album is overall a quite average album and the parts that could make it good are ruined by the vocals.

I think that track five and the title track are the best two on the album, I like those tracks. The album is fairly solid but it is just that, solid. There is nothing really exciting going on here and I doubt that they will even be noticed amongst the ranks of pagan metal band you have the choice to look at. Even though they are fairly good I have a hard time seeing why I should pick them above many other interesting bands, I would describe the album as quite average and neither good nor bad. If you like russian band you’ll probably will be impressed with this album, the rest of you will probably find it agreeable but at the same time you are not really interested.

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