Some bands do not exactly push themselves to the limit when it comes to releasing as much albums as possible. Asmegin from Norway is such a band. In their existence of ten years, they have only released two albums so far, of which the newest spins around in my CD-player as we speak. Since their first album received quite some positive response, I figured I should check out this Nordic folk metal outfit.

Looking at the cover of this album alone, it already gives me a welcome feeling. It’s a beautiful picture of an abandoned piece of land somewhere in the Northern regions of Europe. Very relaxing. But when listening to the music, the relax-factor becomes somewhat less important. The typical Nordic folk-tunes immediately reveal what this band is about. They use a lot of instruments (like organs, violin etc.) to make your mind wander off to places like the landscape on the cover, while the dark, low vocals of vocalist Erik Fossan Rasmussen give a bit of a scary touch to it. Like there’s evil creatures waiting just behind the trees for darkness to fall in.

When it comes to creating the right atmosphere, I like the songs a lot more when there’s no female guest vocals in it. This means that the album openers ‘Fandens Mælkebøtte’ and ‘Hiertebrand’ aren’t exactly the greatest songs to open their album with, for me personally. You see, the thing with the female vocal parts in those songs, is that it all sounds too happy to me. I really miss the dark atmosphere that’s in songs like for example ‘Yndifall’. Also a song like ‘Generalen Og Troldharen’, gives the listener a good idea of what Asmegin is capable of. The song contains lots of tempo changes and really makes you focuss on what exactly is going on there.

So yeah, this band is capable of creating dark atmospheres with their minimal folk metal. And with minimal I mean there isn’t a lot of depth to the songs. They’re all a bit similar since they don’t contain that much surprises. Kinda like you’ve heard it all after listening to the first couple of songs (except for the first two that is). Besides, the band never seems to get really angry. I sometimes miss the real power that should overwhelm me while listening.

In the end Asmegin did a decent job on this album but did not entirely convince me. It’s nice but it misses something. That’s probably personal though, since fans of the genre will most likely dig this stuff nonetheless. Give it a try if you’re into Nordic folk/Viking metal.