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[miko2]

Today's Song: Beyond the Dark Sun by Wintersun

On of my favorite bands is Ensiferum, a Finnish metal band that plays a highly melodic, folk-influenced brand of viking metal that they like to call "heroic folk metal". The name is latin for sword-bearer and their music is all about fantasy themes on heros, dragons, and the like, often inspired by Finnish and Norse epic mythology. They were particularly good on their first two cds, lead by singer/guitarist Jari Maenpaa, but even after he left they're continued to produce good music.

They still aren't available on iTunes (or eMusic or Amazon downloads for that matter). However, when the amazing Jari left he went on to form his own band, Wintersun. This band plays a style of music that is less heroic or folk influenced, but is still quite good. What they play is really progressive power metal, a lot like Stratovarius or Sonata Arctica in some respects (also Finnish bands), but Jari's singing is still mostly a black metal scream/growl. For some reason I like his particular take on black metal vocals a lot more than I do most black/death metal vocalists. For one thing, you can still understand what he's singing.

Anyway, he's an amazing guitarist and Wintersun is a fun band. At this point they've released two cds, and Ensiferum has released an EP and a full-length cd without him, so both bands are prospering. Beyond the Dark Sun is the first song off the first Wintersun cd and remains one of my favorites of theirs.

Wintersun - Beyond the Dark Sun