Band's List Pagan Folk Cales KRF

If you like folk metal bands, Czech band Cales is something for you. But if you love them, you will recognize that this is a band for easy listening without anticipation of anything bigger. Despite a very high quality of the record, this is an album which won’t stumble you but also will excite you in a very decent way. Personally I would expect a theme a little closer to the origin country of the band, but the band seems to keep up with the Viking mainstream.
The usage of traditional music instruments is very modest but the tunes still are very folkloric but also with a hint of deeper, darker elements, apparently from the main man of this project, Blackosh, whose musical roots can be found in more famous Czech black metal band ROOT.

The eight tracks long creation called KRF starts with a song called Barbarian Paganus, really reminding of earlier Korpiklaani works with its whoopee rhythms and cheerful spirit as well as the topic of the song. Nevertheless the welcome song is probably meant to be the most welcoming of the album. The riffs are catchy and the sounds of maybe hammer hits make the song really listenable and memorable. Anyway, with the second track the spirit is slightly changing. Varjag is more aggressive track and also reveals something the first one covered with its battle cry – the voice of the leader despite being the typical shouting-screaming sounds at least for me a bit unpleasant. Also it wouldn’t be bad at all if the whole voice line was a bit more outstanding.

And what was told about the previous song holds true in case of the next song Resolution twice. The melodies are great, the riffs promising, but the general impression has one flaw. The voice and the chores would probably sound much better if they weren’t so thick and were more balanced. But a change in the using of the voice brings the following, clearly sang composition Pass in Time. Unfortunately the voice is still kind of foggy, but while listening carefully you may realize that it is maybe a good idea if you want to hide accent which cannot be hidden by screaming in a song like this. The fifth song of the album is Song of Outlaws, a bit more cheering and folkish sounding and also melodic piece. This is a song with an attitude and great bass parts and almost makes you forget about all the other imperfections.

Legacy of Honour is a track both smooth and heavy. Keeping its wholeness it changes from a deep, almost doom opus to almost rock chantey. The melodic passages also let you enjoy the result of composing skills of Blackish and it would be a lie if you told they are bad. The preview of them is also giving space for sounds of nature and traditional tunes that gave the next Savage Blood an interesting spirit. The well proven combination of hard and heavy elements and light melodies also works here. The closing track Magnificent Masterpiece of Apocalypse is just as its name – long and a bit monotonous, but luckily enriched with some interesting riffs and catchy passages. Unfortunately as an ending it could have at least a boom or be on the contrary fading, but in this case it was just tiring and middling.

As the very last words I could tell something about the booklet. The black – green dark design as well as the illustrations are pretty good, but what could still get some improvement are the lyrics which are written with a bit messy font and too little contrast isn’t helping the reading at all. And even though it is very honourable that the one man did almost all the work on this album, there is one Czech saying that could be translated like “nine crafts, tenth is misery” meaning something like “Jack of all trades, master of none” which Blackosh should think about a little.