Celtic masters

Well, it took them fucking long enough... Play.fucking.com that is!
Two weeks before it's official release date, I ordered Cruachan's promised-to-be-awesome new offering 'Blood On The Black Robe'. It arrived exactly two weeks later. Two fucking weeks later than the official fucking release date, that fucking is!
So, anyway, it's finally blasting out of the towering speaker system here at PC headquarters, and, of course, yours truly has to ask... was it worth Play fucking me about and making me wait?
Of course it fucking was. I've said on this forum and elsewhere that 2011 could well be the year that celtic metal establishes itself as a major force, alongside the more successful Scandanavians, as a major force within the genre.
Certainly, 'Blood...' establishes the case with emphasis. Quite frankly, this is a brilliant album - epic and sweeping in its scope, beautiful yet brutal, just like the Irish mythology in which it is so deeply embedded, melodies swirling and amassing around like ancient warriors preparing to go into batttle, daubed in their tribal colours (something Cruachan also display with pride). This is an epic album in every sense of the word, mixing light and dark with the expertise only a band of this pedigree can manage.
Cruachan, quite rightly, argue that they are the progenitors of the whole 'folk metal' sensation, which subsequently has been hijacked by the invading Viking hordes from Norway, Sweden, and especially Finland (and even the fucking Faroe Islands). With 'Blood.. ' Keith Fay and his warriors drive back the Nordic hordes and reclaim the ancient path for their very own...
- 'Blood On The Black Robe' is out now on Candlelight.