Roundtable album review: Wolfhorde – Towards the Gates of North

Label: Inverse Records

Release Date: 22 January 2016

Songs: 9

Length: 45 minutes

Genre: Folk Metal

Studio Albums: Deathknot (2010), Nyvinland (EP, 2012)

Location: Keuruu, Finland

A very big list of lists

 

This is a catalogue listing rather than a typical Metal State post. One of our followers, MT, suggested I should post text listings of all the albums I featured in my Best of 2015 hit parades during the first two weeks of January.

I’m going to list many more than the 90 albums I ranked on Metal State… 167 albums, in fact. On Metal State I featured 50 metal albums and the top ten each from my prog rock, space & psychedelic rock, jazz & jazz-related, and “other music” hit parades. On other sites I posted longer lists of my non-metal selections. So here we go with my top 50 metal abums plus many honourable mentions; top 50 prog rock plus honourable mentions; top 20 space/psych rock; and the same top ten jazzy and “other music” lists as I posted on Metal State previously.

Mammal’s Best of 2015 – The Winners

 

My heartiest congratulations go to the winners in all of my categories. So does my deep gratitude to all of the finalists and winners for making such great albums in an excellent year for all the types of modern music I love. To you good folks who’ve been following my hit parades, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing some of your picks included in my lists, and I hope you also found something new to explore.

Keep on rawkin’.

 

Mammal’s Best of 2015 – Part 9/10

 

Close-up of my left ear.

Crunch time approaches. We’re into to the Top 10 in my metal hit parade and the runners-up in my other categories. I’d love to have all of the albums in today’s selection. Oh, wait, I do!

Some of us are born with big floppy ears, some are born lucky, and I’m a guy with big floppy ears who got lucky too.

Without music the world would be a much poorer place. Without metal and prog and all my other loves, the world might as well not exist. My ears and my brain would have nothing to do.

 

Mammal’s Best of 2015 – Part 8/10

 

Parrots dance to music they like. Few types of birds do. Parrots, however, move to music in ways they never move to anything else. They ignore slow beats, so there are few if any funeral doom parrots. If you want a dancing parrot, play speed metal. That gets them moshing, bobbing their heads up and down while they shuffle from side to side like goofed-out metalheads.

I mention this because I don’t have a parrot. If I get one I’ll call her Thrasher. If I can find a male to mate with her, she’ll hatch out metal chicks.

There are no parrot songs in my selections for today.

 

Mammal’s Best of 2015 – Part 7/10

 

This was where the really tough part began. It was difficult enough to narrow my selections down to 75 metal albums. Making a final list of my Top 50 was more challenging still. Choosing my favourites from those 50 for my Top 20 sometimes felt impossible. In some ways it still does.

The challenge was as great in my rankings of the other genres in my hit parades.

My top few on every list shouted out to me clearly that they were extra-special. For the others in my top rankings, the order would quite likely change if I were to re-rank them. Enjoyment of music can change very subtly under the tiniest of emotional or other influences.

I shan’t even try to make a combined top list from all of my preferences in different genres.

 

Mammal’s Best of 2015 – Part 6/10

 

Over the weekend I checked the album selections for 2015 on quite a few websites that cover the various genres I love. Some of them, especially those with long lists like mine, feature bands I’ve never heard of. No doubt my lists include bands many people don’t know.

I believe I speak for all of us at Metal State when I say we end every year with a nagging, twitchy feeling that we missed something great during the year. It’s almost certain that we did. In the last 12 months we were offered a couple of thousand albums to review. No person, and no team of four reviewers, could possibly listen properly to that many albums.

To the bands that did make it onto my lists, even if I ranked you #50 that means I liked your work more than a few hundred other albums I played and enjoyed. The same goes for the lists my weird esteemed colleagues have posted. More good music is being made now than at any time, and I’ve been listening to plenty of music during most of my two-thirds of a century on this planet.

 

Mammal’s Best of 2015 – Part 5/10

 

Today’s the day I knock a bunch of you off your branches. If you haven’t learnt how to fly yet, put padding under your tree before you climb up to your roost.

As I mention non-stop, I love many, many kinds of music. So do a lot of you. I know some of you, though, think country music is to metal as Voldemort is to Harry Potter. To you folks, let me irritate you further by stating that country music has some of the best voices of any genre, and it’s lovely background music after a long, lazy Sunday lunch.

 

Mammal’s Best of 2015 – Part 4/10

 

I’ve loved music since the day I was born. I remember it well. The midwife delivered me just after eight in the morning on February 9, 1950. I thought she had kind eyes. My opinion changed when she snipped my umbilical cord.

My mother combed my fur and said to the midwife, “It’s interesting.” Then she added, “What species is it?”

“We’ll know soon,” the midwife replied. “We’ve sent some of its blood to the entomologists and some of its pollen to the botanists. Meanwhile, train it to climb a trellis and play it something with good riffs.” My mother chose these albums for me and I’ve loved them through all the subsequent decades.

Could that be why there’s cross-genre strain of psychedelia in today’s selections?

Mammal’s Best of 2015 – Part 3/10

 

** Sorry I’m posting later than usual today. My ADSL service provider enjoyed an area-wide network error today. I shared in the fun.

Making lists of favourite albums in various main categories can lead to a few dilemmas. Modern music outside the mainstream increasingly ignores the boundaries and tags of recognised genres. My psychedelic/space rock selection today is a case in point. It could equally well have been a metal selection in the lesser-known sub-genre of space metal. Either way, it would have been on one of my lists, so I don’t suppose it matters.

It’s going to happen again before I finish posting all my Best Ofs. And, no, it doesn’t matter, does it? All that matters is the music. I hope you find something you love in today’s pick.