• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Moonsorrow really broke out with their third album, Kivenkantaja, in 2003, but the surprising thing about them is that their first two albums are not really that different, and are only a slight cut below that classic disc in overall quality. It is shocking, going back to this, to rediscover just how fucking good it is. The whole Moonsorrow sound is there—the folk-fueled riffs, the addictive melodies, the epic songwriting. The seams show a bit more between the different influences, and the band was more prone to using mouth harps and flute sounds than they would be later on, but overall the whole concept of Moonsorrow is remarkably complete, even this early. It's easy to forget just how groundbreaking their approach was, waaaay back in the '90s when they first started demoing and Folk Metal was so much more embryonic. A lot of early works in this genre sound awkward and dorky now, but Moonsorrow's still hold up.