Midnattsol -- Why Don't I Love This Band?

The first time I saw the name Midnattsol I processed it as "strange foreign word", but right after that I read it as "Midnight Soul" and it was immediately easy to remember. Naturally, it actually means "Midnight Sun" in Norwegian (sol, sun, I really don't need Kristin to explain this to me do I?)

Anyway, Midnattsol is a band that in almost every way screams "Mark, you will like this band!"

1. They describe themselves as Nordic Folk Metal. Folk Metal? Folk Metal? I've practically never encountered a folk/rock or folk/metal band that I didn't like! Cruachan? Korpiklaani? Ensiferum? Tempest? Garmarna? You name it, I probably like it.

2. They are not only another of those Northern European Goth Metal bands with a female vocalist, said vocalist is the younger sister of Liv Kristine of Leaves' Eyes. I really like Leaves' Eyes, Liv Kristine has a lovely voice and is very beautiful as well -- and she writes her own material, and it's very good.

3. Their cd cover is haunting. Literally. It shows their lead singer as a kind of ghost. It's dumb to let the cover of a cd make the decision for me on whether to buy it or not, but it really is one of the coolest cd covers I've seen in a while.

4. They're a band from Norway. That just seems cool, there really aren't that many bands that come from Norway it seems. I read/heard once that because of all the fjords and the way towns are isolated from one another, you tend to get individual musicians out of Norway much more often than you get large groups. I don't know if that's really true, but until recently I didn't own anything by a Norwegian band. Leaves' Eyes was the first one I cam across.

So with all that going for it... I should love this band right? Well, in fact, I kept listening to the sound clips on Amazon and I continued to not be impressed, but because everything else told me that I would love this band, I ordered their cd anyway. I'm stubborn like that sometimes.

I've listened to the cd a couple of times now. The band is good. The singer is good. But it's one of those cds that, so far, nothing has stuck in my head or caught my attention. Sometimes that just means that I'll get into it in a few more listens, but it might also mean that I'll never really find this cd all that interesting.

This mostly happens to me with bands I really like, because I'm more likely to buy one of their cds without having heard it first. The Tragically Hip are a good example. I loved Up To Here, I pretty much loved the entire cd. When Road Apples came out I listened to it a few times and decided it was completely uninteresting, but later went back and fell in love with most of the cd anyway. When Fully Completely came out, it was like Up To Here all over again -- I loved nearly the whole cd immediately. Then they released Day For Night, and what can I say? I love parts or all of every other Tragically Hip cd I own, but I simply cannot force myself to like any part of this cd. Despite listening to it through on several occasions, I can't even remember anything about it after I've listened to it. Nothing sticks, nothing grabs me.

The Connells had a similar cd -- Weird Food and Devastation. The first song on it I like... the rest of the cd is so forgettable that I listen to it and don't remember anything about it. And I love just about every song on every other Connells cd, so I just don't understand why this one fails so miserably.

Anyway, I don't know yet if Midnattsol is like that, but the things I notice is that despite their supposedly "folk" roots, they don't really play any folk instruments besides a mouth harp. A nice Nordic fiddle would have done wonders -- it only took me 5 seconds of Korpiklaani with their fiddle flying above a dense crush of metal guitar to know that I was in love with this band. If Midnattsol wants to be folk metal, they should inject a bit more folk. Next, there isn't a lot of memorable melody, and no catchy chorus anywhere. The song sounds fine but then never launches into that melodic chorus that this kind of music really needs. Most of the music is written by the lead singer, but Carmine doesn't seem to have her older sister's gift for melody.

There is one thing on the cd that got my attention immediately... it's one of my all-time favorite melodies, from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt. I never thought to hear it as a metal piece, but because I loved the melody so much, this one grabbed me right away.

But in general the end result is... I'm trying hard to like this band, but so far they haven't impressed me much. But maybe after a few more listens that will change. Or maybe I'm expecting too much from them -- Carmine is Liv's younger sister, after all, and this is her band's first cd. If they were to improve and develop, their second cd could be everything I want them to be.

But then, my music collection is littered with bands who had the potential to be really special, but who could never figure out how to get there.

That cd cover is fantastic though.

Tomorrow is Friday. Tomorrow is pay day. Tomorrow is my bonus check day. Tomorrow I'm supposed to start work 2 hours later, so that I can work later at night to help cover for Ellie who is off tomorrow. That means that if I get up when I normally do, I can go deposit my checks and then maybe do something else, like visit Ikea or Frye's, or something. Not that I should really spend much of my bonus check, I have bills to pay and such. But you know. ^_^