WOLFHEART - FINLAND

WOLFHEART - DRACONIAN DARKNESS - REIGNING PHOENIX MUSIC  
A Classical piece begins Draconian Darkness and the CD ends in the same fashion.
As the music proper kicks in, and in the ensuing several minutes, and soon enough keyboards are introduced, all that came to mind was how the growls are forced and somehow just clean singing would suit the band better. It was, therefore, unsurprising when the clean vocals did appear, along with the clean backing chants. The band is Finnish after all.
The music itself is mostly mid-paced and unoriginal, but the band, like most Finland-based acts, has the doomy parts, the gothic parts and the faster parts too. The band does better with its faster parts on songs like Burning Sky, Ancient Cold or Trial By Fire, but the rest of the material leaves the listener indifferent given its derivative/repetitive nature. It is partly this band that has influenced others, but remember that albums like Shadow World or King Of The North have also started with these soft melodious passages. Incidentally, there is a song called Scion Of The Flame, which is a title Hammerfall would have loved to nick first.
The middling affair is not helped given the dearth of guitar solos. A solo on the song Evenfall demonstrates that the act could muster them if it had wanted to. The aforementioned faster segments aside, the drummer is quite reminiscent of Nightwish’s Jukka Nevalainen in style even if we recognize that much of the drumming is sampled. Several decent parts and elements to be sure, but overall indifferent, derivative and Finnish rote. - Ali “The Metallian”