{"id":100836,"date":"2023-07-07T00:00:25","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T23:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=100836"},"modified":"2023-07-07T16:20:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T15:20:08","slug":"album-review-bloodbound-tales-from-the-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-bloodbound-tales-from-the-north\/","title":{"rendered":"BLOODBOUND – Tales From The North (2023) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

BLOODBOUND
Tales From The North<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nAFM (2023)<\/span>
Rating: 7\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The discography of Sweden\u2019s Bloodbound is something I\u2019ve rarely dipped into simply because their style of fantasy-driven power metal just isn\u2019t my thing. In fact, I find so little joy in such glossy meandering where each album unravels like some overlong and all too familiar sword n\u2019 sorcery epic where the listener is almost forced to don wolfskin and carry a heavy sword across the snowy wastes. That\u2019s not to say this isn\u2019t epic heavy metal, Bloodbound have been extremely prolific since forming in 2004 and high levels of consistency have been maintained.<\/p>\n

With this, their tenth full-length opus, the clan conjures further images of flickering firesides, great ice walls, bloody battlefields and glistening lands I\u2019ve never heard of! Put simply, this is nerd metal for the sword collectors, Game Of Thrones<\/em> obsessives and role-players. And that\u2019s not a criticism; it just is what it is.<\/p>\n

Admittedly such fantasy does tend, at times, to sound rather mechanical, more so in the percussive realm. As expected, folk influences are infused with bombastic claps, called by commanding and clear vocal instructions. The title track includes all of the ingredients I\u2019ve just mentioned, just wrap up warm when experiencing such drama or at least send a raven for supplies. As with a majority the tracks on offer the clue is in the title. The likes of \u20181066\u2019, \u2018Odin\u2019s Prayer\u2019, \u2018The Raven\u2019s Cry\u2019 and \u2018Sword And Axe\u2019 couldn\u2019t get more battle worn, and neither could \u2018Drink With The Gods\u2019, \u2018Between The Enemy Lines\u2019 and \u2018Land Of Heroes\u2019.<\/p>\n

How anyone can take such waffling serious is beyond me, but I’m sure these guys can attract quite a crowd to the merry ole inn. After all, they\u2019ve toured with such giants as Hammerfall and Sabaton. As I so often state about this sort of heroic metal, Bloodbound is very much an acquired taste, but slap these dudes on any Euro festival bill and you are guaranteed to see an army of orcs chanting along.<\/p>\n

Orchestral, anthemic, symphonic, three obvious words which spring to mind when delving into the depths of such a saga. It doesn\u2019t excite me in the slightest, it tries my patience like a million word fantasy book and it all too often grates on the bones, and yet I can still see its triumphant appeal, but more so to those fanatics who still prop their bedroom door open with an ancient hammer and write to their pen pals in runes.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLOODBOUNDTales From The North AFM (2023)Rating: 7\/10 The discography of Sweden\u2019s Bloodbound is something I\u2019ve rarely dipped into simply because their style of fantasy-driven power metal just isn\u2019t my thing. In fact, I find so little joy in such glossy meandering where each album unravels like some overlong and all too familiar sword n\u2019 sorcery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5426],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-bloodbound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100836"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100845,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100836\/revisions\/100845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}