Post Description

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                      Suidakra - Lays From Afar
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Artist...............: Suidakra
Album................: Lays From Afar
Genre................: Black Metal
Source...............: NMR
Year.................: 1999
Ripper...............: NMR
Codec................: Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
Version..............: reference libFLAC 1.1.4 20070213
Quality..............: Lossless, (avg. compression: 69 %)
Channels.............: Stereo / 44100 HZ / 16 Bit
Tags.................: VorbisComment
Ripped by............: NMR
Posted by............: Millennium2000 on 2/19/2011
News Server..........: news.astraweb.com
News Group(s)........: alt.binaries.sounds.lossless

Included.............: NFO, MD5, LOG, PAR v2, CUE


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                       Tracklisting
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   1. (00:04:36) Suidakra - A Darksome Path
   2. (00:04:32) Suidakra - Chants Of Lethe
   3. (00:04:03) Suidakra - The Well Of Might
   4. (00:03:52) Suidakra - The Hidden Quest
   5. (00:03:50) Suidakra - Morrigan
   6. (00:01:24) Suidakra - Peregrin
   7. (00:04:36) Suidakra - Wasted Lands
   8. (00:04:20) Suidakra - Strayed In Nowhere
   9. (00:01:08) Suidakra - Airne
  10. (00:04:36) Suidakra - Lays From Afar
  11. (00:01:19) Suidakra - Foggy Dew
  12. (00:04:40) Suidakra - Banshee
  13. (00:04:20) Suidakra - Dragon Tribe
  14. (00:03:49) Suidakra - Heresy
  15. (00:03:20) Suidakra - Sheltering Dreams
  16. (00:04:02) Suidakra - Havoc
  17. (00:04:16) Suidakra - Warpipes Call Me
  18. (00:02:02) Suidakra - ...And A Minstrel Left The Mourning Valley
  19. (00:03:15) Suidakra - Internal Epidemic

Playing Time.........: 01:08:01
Total Size...........: 491.69 MB

NFO generated on.....: 2/19/2011 19:09:53


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The sword is now fully sharpened. - 89% 
Written by hells_unicorn on January 25th, 2011 

 
Some bands have to make several attempts before truly finding their niche 
and this is particularly true of musicians who go for a hybrid style. This could 
be particularly attributed to bands who have found themselves in a 
transitional period between 2 previous musical scene crazes and an emerging 
third one that would envelop and somewhat incorporate both. Suidakra 
entered at such a point and time, and like Ensiferum during their early demos, 
took some time experimenting with the hybrid of melodeath/black/folk 
influences that have since become fairly commonplace, but by the early 90s 
was still a relatively new concept. While the two previous albums before this 
one show a general move away from the Dimmu Borgir meets Windir roots 
that embodied their demo, "Lays From Afar" marks the first really overt 
example of what is now their established sound.

Gone are the loosely fitting pieces of the puzzle, and in their place is a tight, 
very much together formula that still incorporates many differing influences, 
but in a fully unified fashion. The songs are compact and relatively short, 
consistently melodic and forbidding, and much more heroic in character. It 
sticks much more closely to the extreme roots of their black metal influences 
than Ensiferum, and more closely resembles the frenzied riffing approach of 
the Norwegian school rather than the power metal tinged sound that largely 
dominates the Finns' side of the debate. The keyboard work has been 
restrained a bit more to establish a more metallic character to the more 
aggressive songs, and the ballads are much more percussive and folksy than 
atmospheric, which plays somewhat closer to practices introduced by Skyclad 
in the years prior.

If there is one unifying theme that really expresses what this album is about, 
it would be that of intensity. With a formidable collection of riff happy 
blasters in "A Darksome Path" and "The Well Of Might" comes a host of fast 
moving melodic devices that rest somewhere between the blurring character 
of mid 90s Immortal and the thrashing power metal precision of early Skyfire. 
In fact, putting aside the blackened tremolo melodies and folksy acoustic 
sections that pop in and out, this album largely resembles the blazing fury of 
"Timeless Departure" in terms of speed and content. The band settles 
themselves down a bit with more acoustic content and keyboards on "The 
Hidden Quest" (which gets closest to being a token ballad) and the title song 
"Lays From Afar", but even in these softer, short scale epics there is still 
plenty of flash and flair to entice anyone who likes their melodic material on 
the more technical side. The shorter instrumentals function well when 
listening straight through from start to finish, but individually they sort of lose 
their punch, in much the same way as the brief instrumentals found on 
"Nightfall On Middle Earth".

This is the Suidakra that everyone heaps praises on today and rightly so. The 
vocals are vile and blackened, the music is melodic and beautiful, though 
clearly not liking in a good metallic edge, and all of the weak aspects have 
been drastically scaled back, and in the case of Daniela Voigt's vocals, there 
has been an improvement. The only thing that holds this back a little is a 
somewhat wanting production value, particularly insofar as the tinny drum 
sound goes. But in terms of this band's overall discography, this is the earliest 
of their albums that would qualify as being an essential buy for anyone who 
likes their Celtic/Viking music with its beard long and unwashed.
 
line up:
Arkadius Antonik -vocals , guitar , bass
Daniela Voigt - vocals & keyboards
Marcel Schoenen - guitar
Stefan Moller - drums

Recorded at Stage One Studio 
by Andy Classen (06-01 - 15-01-1999)
Mixed and pre-mastered 04-02 - 07-02-1999
Cover Artwork: Kris Verwimp

Suidakra's first full length album 'Lupine Essence' was re-issued as the bonus
tracks to 'Lays From Afar':
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