Needs some time to grow but offers high replay value - A review of Leaves' Eyes The Last Viking

Four years after Leaves' Eyes nasty split with lead singer Liv Kristine, many people wondered whether the group would recover from those events and whether it would carry on at all. After a few lackluster singles and extended plays, Sign of the Dragonhead turned out to be a very solid record and The Last Viking now confirms this positive impression and tendency. The German-Dutch-Finnish quintet offers everything fans are craving for on its eight studio record from angelic female lead vocals to gloomy grunts, from epic folk instrumentation to heavy guitar riffs, from symphonic elements to powerful rhythm sections and from lyrics about Viking tales to Norse mythology between facts and fantasy. The band offers fourteen new songs with a running time of sixty-four minutes which makes this album by far the longest in the band's discography. As usual, there are a few fillers here and there but the vast majority of the song material is good to great and shows that the quintet might have hit its creative peak here.

The album includes several highlights such as the joyful, epic and nearly danceable ''Chain of the Golden Horn'' that opens the album on an enthusiastic note. The epic ballad ''Black Butterfly'' would make most symphonic metal bands go green with envy and features excellent additional vocals by Visions of Atlantis' singer Clémentine Delauney. ''Serkland'' is another anthemic highlight which should find its definite place in playlists for any folk rock and metal parties. Even though ''Varangians'' wasn't chosen as a single so far, it might be the record's greatest hit with an uplifting chorus and a balanced mixture of harsh male vocals and angelic female vocals. Cinematic title track ''The Last Viking'' is much more sinister and might need a few spins to unfold due to its extensive length but the group's longest song to date offers everything the band has always stood for and brings Viking imagery to life in hauntingly atmospheric manner.

Leaves' Eyes certainly doesn't reinvent itself or its genre for that matter. The record might be a tad bit too long with a few fillers in the middle section in particular. The numerous special editions with instrumental bonus disc or a documentary with a soundtrack aren't exactly essential either, However, the quintet's eight studio record The Last Viking offers atmospheric symphonic folk metal that balances aggressive, atmospheric, and catchy elements entertainingly, enthusiastically and fluidly. This album might need a few more spins than some of its predecessors due to its extensive length but offers much replay value as it meanders perfectly between short interludes, catchy single candidates and moody epics. While genre colleagues such as Nightwish push their experimentation much too far for their own good while Within Temptation have simplified their music to shallow pop music, Leaves' Eyes has been offering constant high-quality material on its albums for many years despite numerous challenging line-up changes. This record might be entitled The Last Viking but the band certainly has many more things to offer in the future just like Atrocity that consists of Leaves' Eyes four male members that have found their own new identity on the excellent past two full length records.

Final rating: 78%