reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » Various Artists - Pagan Fire

There has always been a certain “you can’t handle this” element when it comes to metal fans defending their genre from interlopers. Speed/thrash metal got most of its momentum in the mid ‘80s partially in response to the waves of new Priest/Maiden fans crowding metalheads out of their front-row seats; the growing popularity (and notoriety) of seriously extreme black metal in the ‘90s could be seen as a reaction to the stadium-sized audiences Metallica was packing in. Now, with indie hipsters worshipping bands who are willing to go super-heavy and/or super-extreme, and the masses flocking to post-hardcore bands who are both fast and brutal, what are the flag-bearers of True Metal to do? Go back to the roots, of course. Looking backward beyond Metallica, Maiden, Sabbath ... hell, looking backward beyond the Industrial Age, the artists on Pagan Fire can be roughly categorized into three genres: Viking Metal, Pagan Metal, and Folk Metal. Lest you think the latter is of the Indigo Girls-with-distortion-pedals variety, the Finnish folklore assault of bands like Finntroll and Korpiklaani has vintage instrumentation alongside blast beats and death-metal vocals. The pre-Christian lyrical (and musical) approach is, admittedly, something of a gimmick, since most of these bands fit loosely into the sonic parameters of contemporary death/thrash metal, albeit with the occasional accordion. While some are heavier (Amon Amarth, Bathory) and some are more forthrightly evocative of the past (Eluveitie’s “Your Gaulish War” feels like a **Braveheart** battle cry), it’s nonetheless encouraging to see a compilation like this codify a long-gestating movement.  - Jason Ferguson