A fully-fledged concept album, complete with dramatic narration, The Northern Crusades is the fourth album from Catalan melo-death band Icestorm and it has much to recommend it. Forged in the fires of acts such as Amon Amarth, Windir, Blind Guardian and Eluvetie, The Northern Crusades aspires to the epic and frequently achieves it, with some blistering tracks and dizzying musicianship on display throughout.
Fans of the heavy stuff could easily skip the opening Crusaders Of God¸ a cinematic piece of scene-setting narration that serves to place the album in its context. It would be a shame, however, as the band have done their research, and it’s an interesting prelude to what follows. With Across the Baltic Sea (recently released as a single), however, the band get very much to the point, with a short, sharp melodeath assault that sets the adrenaline pumping nicely. Better still is The Iron Fist on The Lance Shaft, a compelling mix of Aman Amarth and Eluvetie, which offers dense riffs and folk-infused melodies, all of which makes for a perfect soundtrack to the quaffing of mead. The sort of track that will set up residence in your head, it’s definitely an album highlight and a sure-fire live killer. It’s followed by the synth heavy The Night Before The Battle, which is little more than a short segue paving the way for the gruelling The Power To Fight, and it’s a pretty enough piece of music, albeit neutered by fade ins and it would have been so much more effective had it been properly crossfaded with the tracks that bookend it. Sequencing issues notwithstanding, the quality of the tracks themselves is beyond question, and The Power To Fight, with its relentless double kick and storming riffs is as blistering a slab of death metal as you might expect from such a concept.
Maintaining the crushing pace, Clash of Titans has some seriously gnarly riffs, courtesy of Jaume Roca, and the band barely pause for breath before plunging headfirst into the musical maelstrom that is The Teutonic Charge, the album’s heaviest track, albeit not without the odd twist to keep things interesting. Marc Storm, on fine vocal form throughout the album, gets a particular moment to shine on Fields Of Death, the dark, chugging riffs allowing more space in the riff for his deathly roar. The band are at the most imperious here, effortlessly conjuring the blood and sweat of the battlefield as they cycle through an array of influences from Arch Enemy to Metallica. With keyboard to the fore, Novgorod Arise throws a few modern production tricks at the listener before settling in a more traditional folk-metal vein. Perhaps surprisingly, given the cinematic flow of the album, the closing Triumph of The Pagan Warriors is another full-blooded metal track, where one might have expected a narrative coda, although the deft shifts from metal to sweeping melodic rock and back are impressive, and bring the album to a suitable close.
Despite a sweeping concept, at just under thirty-five minutes in length, Icestorm wisely keep The Northern Crusades pared to the bone, maximising the impact of both riffs and melodies in the process. The scene setting narration and synth elements keep things suitably cinematic, but the band need to look to their sequencing, particularly in terms of the fades between tracks, which serve only to pull the listener out of the carefully conjured mood. It’s a misstep, rendered the more visible because the overall quality is so high, but not a fatal one, and there is so much to enjoy here, from the carefully researched narration to the band’s obvious technical ability that the album remains easy to recommend. 8/10
