Band: Turisaz
Title: Stand Up And Fight
Label: Century Media Records
Distribution: EMI
Release date: February 28th 2011
Review: CD

I’ll be honest: I’ve never been that addicted to the Finnish melodic Folk Metal scene in general – a handful of exceptions do bless my ears.
Turisaz are such a band that floats in between these two extremes. I wasn’t crazy about Battle Metal (2004) at all, but The Varangian Way (2007) was a huge step forwards. And for the better part, Stand Up And Fight continues the path where The Varangian Way left. However, Stand Up And Fight goes further as well. The album sort of leaves the initial Epic / Folk-tradition, and instead the whole is much more orchestral and bombastic. Atmospheric Metal, Sympho Metal, Goth Metal, True Metal, Power Metal, Opera Metal, it’s this direction the band went. Or at least: most of the time.
The folkish roots have not gone completely, of course. The atmosphere on most songs is fearless and proud, even though the classical influences predominate. Yet some songs bring the purity of Suomi-Folk tout court (Hunting Pirates or the heavy battle song The Great Escape amongst others).
Stand Up And Fight comes with a more cinematographic and sensory approach this time. It makes it extremely difficult to compare it with the past, and it cannot be labelled that easily within the same category as, let’s say, Finntroll, Moonsorrow or Kalmah anymore. It gets closer to those bands mixed with stuff à la Therion, Lacrimosa, Epica, Majesty or Aina.
Even the border with Pop and Rock Music fades away – Fear The Fear could have been written as opening song to a new 8+ animation movie, if you follow me.
Stand Up And Fight is a colourful Rock Opera for sure, but sorry, I’m not convinced this time…

65/100

Ivan Tibos.