One Man Army(2015) by Ensiferum

Their newest album is my ticket to Ensiferum havenland. The folk metal act from Finland is one of those bands you really have to know the name of in order to not be shunned upon by your fellow metalheads. I checked out this album when I first heard of its release thanks to Coverkillernation. Released in mid-February, this is already a good starting point for the first half of the year. I can tell this year will be great. On my level of awesome and folk metal love.

Much like their fellow collegues like Eluveitie, Korpiklaani, Tyr, and Equillibrium, they tend to have more of a death metal sound of vocals which actually adds to the atmosphere you hear in this album. They don’t exactly use alot of folk instruments unlike Eluveitie and the like, but the do still sound like how they did when former member Jari was in the band for the first two albums. I can say, I have to check out more of these guys’ stuff because this is amazing. The song lengths range anywhere from 3 minutes to the epic 11 minutes. They also weren’t afraid of making a bluegrass song that was stuck on at the end known as Neito Pohjolan, which not alot of people like because of the drastic change of pace from the album. I honestly like the song, enough said.

Though I haven’t been around long enough to really digest their whole discography, I have to give it a rating which would have to be a strong 8.9/10