I've heard only a few bands coming from Ireland, namely Primordial and Cruachan. Waylander's debut album 'Reawakening Pride Once Lost' is definitely more traditional heavy metal when compared to those two aforementioned bands. All the Irish bands I've heard have always had that certain folk music influences and Waylander is no exception.

Waylander's heavy metal side is quite simple: familiar and simple riffs and no flashy playing. Sometimes, emphasis on sometimes, music and riffs feel too familiar and playing is somewhat sloppy, but we're humans after all. The energy flow can be heard, so to hell with precision! The folk side has an opposite feel to it, because it adds a lot of atmosphere and fluency to otherwise quite inflexible compositions. Real (no synthesized shit) instruments are used, e.g. a tin-whistle and a bodhrán (a drum). So there's two sides in Waylander's music: ugliness of metal and beauty of folk. 'King of the Fairies' is a traditional song from over 2000 years ago. Lyrics tell tales of Irish warriors, gods, life and such from a pagan point of view. Vocals are varying from ugly raspy growl and clean singing and some speech. Either vocals style isn't very good, and growling, which is the almost totally used style, is not varying enough. In general, it is not easy to put a tag on Waylander, since their sound and music is a mixture of many a metal style (e.g. death, thrash, black and heavy metal elements) and folk music, but still very compact.

The Andy Classen production is simply rough. No studio tricks, no deep cleaning of the tracks. But it fits well for Waylander. Everything is well audible in the mix. What can I say about it? It's live vibe, I guess!

Waylander was probably (they are on a new label now) one of the uneasier bands on Century Media's catalogue, meaning that this is surprisingly rough in Century Media roster these days. Still, and because of that, check 'Reawakening...' out, if you enjoy Irish folk and now we got it with metal! And listen it more than twice, please, because this definitely has more contents than first two spins reveal.

Rating: 6½ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
01/09/2001 12:51