Band: Nothgard
Title: Warhorns Of Midgard
Label: Black Bards Entertainment
Distribution: Sonic Rendezvous
Release date: April 1st 2011
Review: CD

Nothgard were originally formed as Nordavind, yet due to different line-up changes, the band finally changed its moniker into Nothgard. The first studio full length (only a couple of demos has been recorded until now) Warhorns Of Midgard was created with studio assistance of nobody else but Andy Classen (Requiem, Suidakra, Varg, Belphegor, Sinister etc.), and includes guest vocals by Cold Tragedy’s Marco Arndt (owner of the CT Studio, the place where the band recorded some of the instrumental parts) and Lokhi from Wolfchant.
Warhorns Of Midgard is ‘evident material’: the title of the album and the songs, the label they signed to, their original and new moniker, indeed: Pagan-stuff like we’re getting overcrowded with lately. The band’s melodic, epic and technical mixture of Folk, Viking, Heavy, Death and Black Metal is more symphonic than many colleagues (the keyboards were recorded, by the way, at Terminus Kill’s Andreas Weber’s home studio), but the leading riffs, rhythm section, vocals and melodies are oh so heard-it-before; even many folksy excerpts have been performed before.
Normally a good average performance quality and / or a splendid sound can make me ignore the lack of originality, but Nothgard just play acceptable – nothing more, unfortunately. Nothing less either (believe me: I can sum up hundreds of bands that bother and bore me more, much more, than this one), luckily, yet again this is one of the oh so many releases lately within the Folk / Pagan / Black / Viking / Epic-scene with nothing exceptional to add. Too catchy, too predictable, too clean…
And clocking near an hour, well, enough is enough…

67/100

Ivan Tibos.