Taken from Metal Coven:
http://www.metalcoven.com/
Thunderkraft Reviewed 02/05/06
The Banner of Victory
[Blazing Productions]
I had no clue who the Ukrainian band Thunderkraft was when I first saw their debut full length album "The Banner Of Victory" advertised in an online distro, but as soon as I heard they were a Folk Death Metal band, I ordered it right away. When it comes to Folk Metal, there's just not much out there in the Death Metal genre, so I picked it up just for the speciality of it all. Also, learning that among Thunderkraft's ranks are two Nokturnal Mortum session musicians, a member of Drudkh, and the flute player for Kolo made me want it even more!
The Death Metal aspect of Thunderkraft's music has a lot of groove, is extremely heavy and very well played. The closest comparison I can find to other bands out there is that throughout "The Banner Of Victory" I hear influences from the first Dismember, Entombed and Grave albums. It's very atmospheric, melodic and Swedish sounding Death Metal, but this is good since Dismember, Grave and Entombed themselves have not played in this great style in a long while. As I mentioned before, there is a lot of groove in their music, as well as a lot of those guitar "squeal" techniques Death and Thrash Metal bands like to use. Very rarely, and I mean rarely, the album picks up speed and will sound a bit Black Metal, but this is only evident in a few spots on the album, and it only resembles Black Metal at all because of the drum blast beats. The C.D. also sees the liberal use of a synth, and it works quite well with the rest of their sound, if you can imagine that. Last but not least, what makes this a Death "Folk" Metal album is Ann's excellent flute playing. Don't think the flute is played constantly on the album, because it isn't. You'll mostly only hear it at the beginning or end of a song, or if the Death Metal breaks down into a more acoustical style. The few flute parts that she does play here add such a kick ass layer of folkiness to the dirty and guttural Death Metal sound of the album, that the end result is impossible for me to describe here. You'd think flutes and Death Metal wouldn't work, but it does so very well. I guess Dark Reality pulled off Death Metal with a recorder with great results, so this shouldn't be any surprise. Ann also plays flute for another band called Kolo whose album I bought not too long ago that didn't impress me at all. I bought it thinking it was an outright acoustic Folk album, but it had all kinds of World Music and other crap on it that ruined it for me. The Folk music and traditional instruments on that album, some played by Ann, were great though.
The vocals on "The Banner Of Victory" really remind me of the vocals on Grave's first album "Into The Grave". Lower register guttural Death vocals with no compromises! I can't quite say what the lyrics are all about as they weren't printed within the booklet. They are sung and written in Ukrainian anyway, so even if they were printed hear I still wouldn't be able to tell you what they lyrics are trying to convey.
The mix and production on the album is perfect for Death Metal. In my opinion Death Metal albums should always have plenty of bass and low-end to them. The engineer should always make sure the bass drums and the bass guitar itself is represented well, and they did just that for "The Banner Of Victory".
The layout of the album is pretty good, if nothing spectacular. The cover art shows some scavenger birds, maybe ravens, flying over a battlefield completely covered with the corpses of fallen warriors. It's done completely in black and white which I usually don't care for, but there's a lot of detail there, so I actually find myself enjoying the art quite a bit. I like the Thunderkraft logo a lot as well. Especially the eagle, Celtic knots and the German Iron Cross that weaves in with the letters of their logo.
Early 90's Death Metal fans will definitely want to check this album out. This album harkens back to a time in Death Metal when the genre was fresh and new, and the music was melodic and memorable instead of just concentrating on brutality. Folk Metal fans that are tired of Folk Black Metal will also want this in their collection to spice things up a bit. There's a lot of Nokturnal Mortum members playing in other bands these days it seems, but this is the best album I've heard released by any of them!
