A glimpse at the cover of this album immediately reveals what kind of music this band plays. Five face painted warriors and a blonde princess in the middle. Must be folk metal then. Indeed, it is. From Finland comes Kivimetsan Druidi, a band that brings epic, dark and heavy songs, combined with lyrics that handle the everlasting battle between good and evil, hatred and forgiveness, jealousy and willpower.

What distinguishes KD from other folk metal bands is that they don’t use a lot of traditional folk instruments. Now, you might especially like folk metal just because of those instruments, but very often it’s a complete overkill. On this album, that sure isn’t the case. Then again, one may conclude that therefore this band tends to lean on death metal too much to be a real folk metal band. Well, I’m sure everybody’s got his or her own opinion on that. Fact is, Shadowheart will never reach the great audience anyway since it’s too specific a style to enjoy for everyone in the metal scene.

Though I consider myself a folk fan as well, this album doesn’t pull it off for me. The album contains too much of the same songs in my opinion, leaving me with a mixed feeling. On one hand I hear a quality band that knows what it’s capable of; playing good folkish death metal tunes. On the other hand, the album lacks variation, with too much of the same voice of singer Leeni Maria and too few grunting vocal parts to keep things interesting.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This band is good, singer Leeni Maria certainly has a beautiful voice (and face) and the album as a whole is worth a try. Still, I’ve heard other bands before doing the same thing, but better. I guess Shadowheart is that album you should really try to find out whether you like it or not, for I cannot come up with a definitive conclusion. Even the fact that more than half of all the songs are sung in Finnish, can’t change that. Excusez moi!