Rawr Rawr Rawr

In my quest to sample new and weirdly different music, I recieved in the mail today a cd by Finntroll called "Jaken's Tid".

Finntroll is clearly one of the most unusual rock bands on the planet. What they do is basically "Death Metal Polka". They are a death metal band, but most of their songs are set to traditional Finnish polka beats, complete with accordion. Played extremely fast, mind you.

One thing I'm learning is that I'm not really oppossed to death metal, if the music is interesting. First Battlelore, and now Finntroll. Another thing about Finntroll is that you don't need to bother trying to understand all those gutteral growls, because it's all in Finnish anyway. You'll never understand it, unless you happen to speak Finnish, and then, given my typical experience with this type of music, you probably STILL won't understand it.

But my guess is it involves Finnish Trolls and their underworld kingdom, and lots of drinking and fighting. Just a guess based on the cd cover and interior art, and the pictures of the band.

In other news, I've played some EQ this week, worked on a story, read about infamous murderer H.H. Holmes, and picked up comics including Tokyo Mew Mew 2, Chobits 6, Marmalade Boy 7, Mars 11, GTO 10 or thereabouts, and Love Hina 11. Also Akiko #50, and the latest Inu-Yasha dvd. (Basically, everything came in this weekend... next week I'll probably have one or two things to pick up at most).

Finntroll is my favorite death metal band!

That's not really saying much, because I'm not a fan of death metal generally speaking. I have a few cds by obscure bands like Kittie and Mortification which pretty much convinced me that I don't like all that growly screaming stuff.

But Finntroll is interesting, creative, and bizaar. Not just the polka rhythms and folk music mixed with metal, but other things. In one song, they do a little instrumental tune that sounds like a classical piece, something troll-like in the vein of In The Hall of the Mountain King I suppose. But basically a weird little tune that has no connection to death metal or rock at all. Makes me think of Flop or Mudhoney, who have also done weird instrumental pieces in the middle of the cd before.

Another song sounds like an unholy hybrid of polka-folk and country, with bluegrass banjo and sammi joik singing. Several songs not only sport polka rhythms but will suddenly break into folk music interludes with accordion or flute or synthesizer, and then launch back into polka-rhythm death metal.

But the coolest thing is that they do a cover of one of my favorite Heningardna tunes. Heningardna is a Swedish/Finish folk rock outfit, but not hard rock, more electronica-oriented. Finntroll turns one of their songs into a weird death metal tune. It's not as cool as the original, but it's certainly different.