Battlelore – The Last Alliance

Releasedate: 26-09-2008; Label: Napalm Records
By: Elvira Visser

With “The Last Alliance” the Finns of Battlelore return once again to the stories of J.R.R Tolkien and his legendary Middle Earth. The band was founded back in 1999 when Jyri and Mikki joined forces. After some line up changes in the past years they released their fourth album “Evernight” in 2006, which was received greatly by fantasy metal fans. Battlelore seems to prolong their success with this new album.

Battlelore plays a mix between gothic, folk and power metal, simply put as fantasy metal. The female vocals of Kaisa Jouhki are used to create this dreamlike atmosphere, with her elvish vocals which sound delicate and soft. These, mixed with the harsh screams of Tomi Mykkänen, will tell you the story of the last alliance. I have to say that it sounds if Kaisa does not sing with passion, maybe even bored. Maybe that is their opinion of elvish vocals. It is quite dreary even though there are nice melodies that are catchy, but that is mostly the result of the well composed music. Luckily Tomi adds a twist with his growls and vocals. I have to say that the tracks where Tomi is more present are my favourites. “The Great Gathering” is an example of that, the music seems to get more rough as he sings and growls. It does deliver a nice variation between the softer and harder passages I must say. The intro of “Daughter of the Sun” is a little too slow, to be in the middle of the album. I would have placed it somewhere else, because this track does have variation from Tomi: whispering, growling and clean vocals. “Green Dragon” and “Moontower” are tracks that have the metal influences resulting in great grunts and pounding drums and Kaisa does deliver a nice atmosphere on these tracks.

I think this album continues their sound from “Evernight” and fans of from fantasy metal and Battlelore will surely like this new album.