Tracklist:

"By the Dividing Stream"  – 3:50
"From Afar" – 4:52
"Twilight Tavern" – 5:39
"Heathen Throne" – 11:09
"Elusive Reaches"  – 3:26
"Stone Cold Metal"  – 7:26
"Smoking Ruins"  – 6:40
"Tumman Virran Taa"  – 0:53
"The Longest Journey (Heathen Throne Part II)" – 12:49
"Vandraren" (Nordman cover; Limited edition bonus track)

Personnel

Petri Lindroos – harsh vocals, guitars
Markus Toivonen – guitars, clean and backing vocals
Sami Hinkka – bass, clean and backing vocals
Janne Parviainen – drums
Emmi Silvennoinen – keyboards, backing vocals

The Finnish folk metal pioneers, Ensiferum, are back with their latest effort "From Afar". They made a tremendous impact with their self-titled debut and continued to deliver consistent, if a little disappointing, albums after that. Eight years, 4 albums and numerous line-up changes later, with "From Afar", Ensiferum have cemented their name amongst the great metal bands to originate from Scandinavia.

The album begins with a traditional acoustic intro in the form of "By the dividing stream". This is very much against the recent trend of pummeling the listener with shred-tastic riffs from the get go. However, the title track that follows wastes little time in engulfing the listener in a torrent of riffs, grooves and blasts.

Those who are long time listeners of the band will not be surprised by tracks like "Smoking ruins", "Twilight taverns" and "Elusive reaches". The songwriters have a great ear for melody and it shows.

The album concludes with "Vandraren", the band's cover of the song by Swedish group "Nordman". This is the group's attempt to fuse different genres. The end result is reminiscent of the works of fellow Finns TURISAS.

I have deliberately postponed my views on two songs, "Heathen throne" and "The longest Journey". These are the album's two epics. It is on songs like these that one can see how the band has matured. A lot of attention has been paid to developing the songs as they progress over a total time of over 20 minutes. "Heathen Throne" is the more 'metal' of the two songs with some great melodic passages and gallops. "The longest journey" (the album closer) is the more mellow, acoustic-y and keyboard based track in the album. The reason it makes sense to have such a track as a closer is in order to give the listener an opportunity to appreciate the effort that has been put into developing a cohesive and memorable album.

The band's musicianship has never been something to question. Each member knows their place in the song and they give their instruments (and voices) a unique feel which many generic bands fail to do. Kudos to the production team for giving each instrument the importance it deserves. In modern times, blast-centric death metal consists of a drum centric mix while thrash and power metal tend to drown them out in favor of the axe (Black metal on the other hand does not have 'a mix' to really speak of).

With this album, Ensiferum should silence critics, please existing fans and also attract many new ones. They have managed to combine melody, intensity and great musicianship into a digestible package that should appeal to all tastes.