Victory Songs - Ensiferum

'Victory Songs' is Ensiferum's most recent album, and a largely unsurprising one. With its mix of speeds and repetitive style, this seems more like a mix of the first two albums rather than a development of the style, and new vocalist Petri Lindroos of Norther brings a disappointingly generic death metal rasp to the proceedings that lacks his predecessor's somewhat more distinctive and varied approach. All that said, it's still a highly enjoyable album of folk metal from masters of the craft. This album becomes increasingly tedious as it goes, merely thanks to the similarity between many of the songs, as the style becomes fairly old. Earlier songs like the ...  Read the complete review