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[miko2]

Today's Song: Happy Little Boozer by Korpiklaani

I didn't have any internet service for most of last night so I didn't get to do my song of the day update, so I'm doing it on my lunch break. And I know I did a Korpiklaani song the previous day, but I've been listening to them a lot the last couple of days so I wanted to do another one.

For years after I first got into folk music and folk-rock, I dreamed of being able to listen to actual folk metal. Steeleye Span was my introduction to folk rock, but they were far more folk than rock. When bands like Phoenyx, Tempest, and Boiled In Lead came along I was really happy, because these were folk-rock bands that actually rocked pretty hard. But still, none of them were metal.

Later I discovered Garmarna and Hoven Droven, which were the hardest-rocking folk rock bands yet. Still, they didn't really qualify as metal bands. And then I finally hit paydirt. I came across true folk-metal bands such as Ireland's Cruachan, Finland's Fintroll, and folk/viking metal bands like Ensiferum.

But a lot of these bands were either skewed heavily towards the death metal side of things (folk metal and viking metal branched out from death metal originally) or they were bands that grafted a bit of folk sound onto their metal. Cruachan was the closest thing to a true folk-metal band that I could find, but they were also one of those bands where I only really liked about a third of the songs on any given cd, if that.

And then I discovered Korpiklaani. Here is a band that really is both a folk band and a metal band. To me they're a perfect mix of the two, with vocals that are certainly rough but not your deep-throated death metal grunt/growl. They employ a fiddle player and also an accordian as full-time band members, and they write songs that are very metal but are also deeply rooted in folk, in particular Finnish humpta or polka folk music.

Korpiklaani specialize in pagan songs about the forest spirits and the old gods and also in songs about getting drunk. In some cases (such as Wooden Pints their songs are about both at once, but songs such as Beer, Beer and Happy Little Boozer are just happy drinking party songs. They'd be perfect songs for an SCA viking party, with the exception that Korpiklaani is too Finnish to write about any Norse gods.

I've since also added Elvenking to my list of bands that successfully meld folk and metal, but really I think Korpiklaani does it best. The really good news is that they've not only stayed together but have been incredibly active, releasing four albums now in only five years. So here's to a band that parties like it's 999!

Happy Little Boozer