Chuck Schuldiner Project

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Mongol-The Altan Urug

Litany portrait
Mongol is quite possibly the greatest unsigned folk metal band that you will hear this month. With a sound that is full of brutal death metal aggression mixed with rather beautiful melodies creates a unique blend of sounds that you will not soon forget.

The guitar playing is of course very folk metal. Yet it puts its own spin on the genre. With a lot of ancient Mongolian melodies he adds the overall melodies to the music. With some ancient mongolian style shredding this band starts off cool. Yet then when it gets brutal, rather than going the black metal route that many other folk metal bands do these guys go for full on brutal death metal. This means that there is a lot of destructive power here. A force you will not soon forget.

The bass playing on this album is especially brutal and really dominates the heaviest bits of the music. He definitely makes the galloping rhythms insane and is overall a very skilled rhythm player. The drumming is crazy and almost battle frenzied. He gets the crazy feel of the mongolian charge down pat. All in all this rhythm section definitely gets the mosh pits going and shows how great this band can be.

The other miscellaneous instruments, like the keyboards, mandolin, accordion and banjo all have their own special places in the songs. While only the keyboards are present on every one they all work together to add a more authentic feel. They make the band seem as old as the hordes that they are describing and remind you that not all has passed into legend. The playing by all of them is simply stellar.

Finally we have the growls, with a vicious brutal death anger to them they show the true evil of the hordes. They also have a very powerful feel to them, they are very meaty. This means that the songs about raping and pillaging and salting the earth become even more poignant. This bands vocalist knows how to deliver and he really gets you headbanging.

In conclusion Mongol is a unique folk metal band that will really get your head twirling as they take you back to ancient times. They show a new side of folk metal that could provide an interesting future to the genre. So go check them out, I mean, how many other bands have songs about the single greatest empire of the middle ages?

https://www.facebook.com/MongolCanada

2 comments:

  1. Mongol is great! check them out on youtube too. they have almost all their new album uploaded.

    ReplyDelete
  2. didn't even notice that
    but it is indeed there!

    ReplyDelete