DEATH OF FOLK - Neverending At His Neverending Journey
Demo
Release: 2002
By: Calani
 
This time it was a hard job to do this review. It is not because Neverending At His Neverending Journey would be totally crap, not at all, at reverse it also doesn’t kick me out of my smelly metal socks either. In fact, this album is more or less average. You know, all these well known and established ingredients you have listened to umpteen times … but … at least to me it has a subjective fascination and it is captivating to me a lot. I don’t know why and I’m torn coz of that!
DEATH OF FOLK is a band from Croatia which was founded as a solo project in 2001 by mainman Lanzarot. After a few musicians have joined this project it turned out into a regular band and with the already existing material and brimming creativity Neverending At His Neverending Journey was compiled and recorded. Thus this demo CD is the first ever output of DEATH OF FOLK.
Musically these mates range basically in Gothic Metal fields but you also will find folk elements and a pinch of Black and Death Metal. Now add the typical female voice and you will get a classic concoction.
It starts out with the two-piece opener Eastern Frost which already shows structural flaws and sounds absent-minded. In the first part (pre-intro?) you can hear some restrained fiddles in the background like you would get on a gipsy camp or on a medieval fest. After a short break the real intro starts or whatever. It’s also an instrumental but with a heavy guitar solo which reminds me of old Iron Maiden stuff. Follower He Came From Foreign Land attends with familiar but still wonderful and melancholic guitar leads ( maybe like Amorphis from the Tales From Thousand Lakes album, just clean?). It’s just great! Deep tonal growls and the typical female high-pitch-singing. Helena’s voice is very pleasant but most of the time drops behind the dominant guitars. At Riverdrowning Of Perun it goes one or two paces heavier and faster with more Death Metal in it. Some voice effects flow in too which know how to please. Both of these songs you already can take as an intersection of the entire album. At times the growls get accompanied by Black Metal-like screams, also flutes and fiddles can be heard all the times through and lend Neverending At His Neverending Journey a folkloristic touch. But these folk elements sound pretty normal. Wouldn’t it be more interesting to use special Croatian folk or something like that?
Helena’s singing often sounds very familiar to me as well as some guitar riffs (like the ones in ... Then It Will Own My Life ... pure Paradise Lost).

What remains under the bottom line? For a first sign of life ever Neverending At His Neverending Journey is really well produced and powerful. That the drums come from Mr. PC I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t read it. Advantage!
On the other hand DEATH OF FOLK show the typical flaws and mistakes rookies make. Clumsy and incomprehensible song structures, too many guitar solos and the singing got mixed under. Disadvantage!
Contrarily there are really talented musicians at work with a sense for romance and melancholy. Especially the guitars I like a lot. It’s not that complicated but emotive and effective :-) Advantage!
All things considered this kind of music is well known and established. There is nothing new and innovative. DEATH OF FOLK lack of an own style and an own identity. Disadvantage!

2:2 then … drawn *argh*. But in case of doubt for the culprit. There is a lot of potential existing, so guys and gal make the best of it! That’s just the first ever demo CD, there is much more scope for everything. In what direction this band will go … we will see.

Oh yes … at the end there is kind of a hidden track, a cover version of Tiamat’s Sleeping Beauty. It’s not the worst cover I have heard, it’s more or less identical to the original. Which means, there is no own interpretation, just repeated. And that’s waste of time. And besides here Helena’s singing really gets on my nerves. Sorry.

Death Of Folk