Cirith wrote:
I know I'm in the minority, but having been into Turisas since Battle Metal, I found Stand Up and Fight virtually unlistenable. All punch is gone from the over-polished production, there's more orchestration than guitar, nearly every song contains a slow, Broadway-style monologue about how tough battle is, the riffs are forgettable (when you find them), and the excess of clear vocals only emphasizes how cheesy the lyrics really are (and unfortunately those are cheesier now than ever). Turisas has unfortunately crossed the blurry line between symphonic metal and heavy film score, the latter of which really can't hold my interest. I still love the first two albums, which were Viking metal with some real meat; now I regret to say that it's all cream and fluff and maybe some tofurkey.
These are partially my thoughts as well (minus the lyrics part). I liked Battle Metal when it came out and found the band really fresh and energetic. The Varangian Way was good, but they seemed to get a bit tamer than on Battle Metal though without losing their epic feel. The album was also a bit better put together than Battle Metal. But the few songs I've heard off Stand Up and Fight seem to have lost their energy, traded in the harsher vocals for a clean spoken narrative that fails to really deliver what their older material did.
In retrospect, it does make sense that they would go in this direction, but I just wish that (for my sake) they wouldn't have gotten so tame. To put it in language suiting the music: they've gone from sounding like energetic and battle-hungry 20-something viking warriors, to sounding like 50-something year old warriors who would rather sit in their boats and remenisce than go charging into battle. While doing what they are doing may be an interesting concept and something I'd like to enjoy...it just doesn't catch my attention musically.
