Rating: 6/10
Release: 16 August 2024
Label: Reaper Entertainment

A Pagan Storm is their second album from 2007 re-recorded. I must admit that I have heard very little about this band until recently when they appeared on my Viking Metal playlist on Spotify.  I often let their music play through and rarely skip them on the playlist, but do not follow them. They hail from Germany but have a more Nordic feel in their name, artwork, and music. Not your typical German power or folk metal. The songs are fast paced, driven bass and drum play accompanied by melodic and folky guitar riffs and leads.

Now for the review, I am sure I will get pushback from fans of this band.

While most songs have folk metal undertones to it, if I were to classify the album, I would say it is more in the line of melodic black/death metal. Heavy and raw with great melodies and stand out with good guitar riffs. Many of the lead melodies have a folk metal feel to it. Other critics say they sound like bands such as Ensiferum, Moonsorrow, and Suidakra, but  I hear little influence from these bands but do hear Iron Maiden, Running Wild and some Mithotyn .  ‘Staerkend Trunk aus Feindes Schaedel’, for example, has a riff that sounds like it was lifted from the beginning of Iron Maiden’s ‘Wasted Years’.

I favor the songs that include clean vocals, I really wish they would incorporate this more. The opening track is an instrumental and I do like albums that open with a musical introduction, to me it sets the tone of the rest of the album. One of the ones I keep going back to is ‘Guardians of the Forest’, which is my second favorite song. ‘Midnight Gathering’ has a bit of a Running Wild vibe to it. The clean vocals and brief acoustic interplay on ‘Winterhymn’ make me want more songs like this. It has a good Viking/pagan feel to it. This would be my favorite track on the album.

Now on the re-recording aspect. Sometimes when bands do this the outcome is great, sometimes they ruin the album (i.e. Dimmu Borgir – Stormblast). I went back and listed to the original recording and then the re-recorded version. The original is better, due to the fact that it has more atmosphere and yes, there are parts that are not mixed the best, some songs we lose the bass guitar, but overall, the mix is not bad, better than some albums. The re-recorded version is crisper, with better separation between the instruments, and the vocals are more stand out, but it just does not have the same feel.

Overall rating 6/10 – listen to the original version 8/10.

Tracklist

1. Growing Storms
2. A Pagan Storm
3. The Path
4. Midnight Gathering
5. A Wolfchant from the Mountain Side
6. Guardians of the Forest
7. Stärkend Trunk aus Feindes Schädel
8. Winterhymn
9. Voran
10. Feuerbringer
11. The Axe, the Sword, the Wind and a Wolf