Album review: ELVENKING – Reader Of The Runes (part 2), Rapture

AFM Records [Release date 28.04.23]

Heavy metal pirates, Elvenking, set sail again, boldly going where few bands dare to go.

It’s no exaggeration to claim that this album is a unique heavy metal experience. Operatic, symphonic, folky, very lyrical, not the full blast you associate with any kind of heavy metal variant. This is about mood and emotion, and creating its own highly melodic metal landscape.

If they have a formula it is that there’s no formula.

We reviewed the darkly theatrical opener, ‘Rapture’, when it came out as a single release some months back, noting that it continues a complex but satisfying story concept. Thus the full album title.

Musically, it acts as our guide to the tracks that follow.

‘Herdchant’s gritty, celtic themed axework and ‘To The North’s bold incursion into Viking metal territory, normally occupied by Leaves Eyes or Ensiferum, are as imaginative and inventive as you could possible expect. The fact they are tightly woven into towering, wall to wall choruses and macho harmonies is an unexpected bonus.

Heavy and powerful, ‘The Hanging Tree’ and ‘The Cursed Cavalier’ punctuate a blizzard of metallised guitars with a thundering mix of keyboards and violins, delivered in short sharp punches and shouty vocals. They quake with pneumatically powered riffs and pumping rhythms, and that pushes them closer to traditional heavy metal, in the vein of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.

And so the geography of Elvenking’s melodic metal continues to expand, from the conventional US/European rock song format, of ‘Bride Of Night’ and ‘Red Mist’, to the 17th century hornpipes and marching, military meter of ‘Incantations’.

Each time you listen to The Runes, Rapture, it reveals something more. It’s as good a metal album you are likely to hear this year. ****1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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