Olden Tales & Deathly Trails, an Album by Wilderun. Released 21 September 2012 on n/a (catalog no. Genres: Folk Metal, Progressive Metal.

Hello Temple. Today I bring you a very special treat. It’s not a new album, but one we don’t have on here and I made a point to bring it to you. This album is called “Olden Tales & Deathly Trails” by WILDERUN and it was released in 2012.

When I stumbled on this album a few years ago in the suggestions of iTunes, I fell in love with it right away. This Folk Metal band took their inspiration from band like TURISAS, ALESTORM and ENSIFERUM to bring us a northern European style of Folk Metal, but with an American taste. WILDERUN was a solo project at first for Evan Berry. In 2008 he started writing songs without any directions until he met up with Wayne in 2012. Jonathan had already played drums with Evan prior to this so he was a natural choice and he later suggested adding Daniel.

The band was completed in the early 2012. This album “Olden Tales & Deathly Trails” is a great Metal reinterpretation of old western tales. When you rewrite old tales, you can’t go wrong with Folk Metal and they did an amazing job on this front. The amount of effort to make those songs stand out and still be true to their origin is impressive to say the least. As the start of this album, you are treated to the equivalent of a rising sun in “The Cracking Glow”. This definitely is an amazing introduction to the beautiful melody that ensues.

It moves seamlessly into the “Suncatcher”, which is a powerful introduction to the band itself. The musicianship is flawless and the voice of Evan is incredible, he can move from a perfect Death Metal growl to a perfectly clear and vibrant voice in a flash.

So much so that I had to make sure it was him that did both. “How Stands the Glass Around?” was the song that hooked me up, the first song I heard from them. It hit me like a ton of brick, the orchestration of this song is amazing. You can also clearly hear some Folk instruments there, which gives so much life to this song. Throughout the album, they used some Mandolin, Hammered Dulcimer and Autoharp. All of those must have been used for this song.

Now we move along to “Storm Along”, the tale of Captain Storm Along reimagined into a 7 minutes 42 of pure joy for your ears. This is, by far, my favourite song of the album. This song has everything, including folk instruments solo, death growl, an amazing hook and such an emotion packed middle part that it sent shivers down my spine. If I had this on a CD or a vinyl, I would have probably broken it by playing it so many times. “The Vaunting Veins” and “The Dying Californian” are just as powerful in all aspects with a dip into the Power Metal genre. They have nothing to be shy about comparing to the other songs as they condense into 21 minutes of the album without much repetition.

It is really a fantastic writing job all around. Last but not least, “The Coasts of High Barbaree”: Not being from the USA myself, I never really heard this old tall tale. So I did some digging up and found a traditional version of this song. It is mind boggling how they could take such a tasteless and bland song and made it so epic. They turned it into 7 minutes of pure Metal. This is by no mean a new album for me, and yet I just can’t stop listening to it. WILDERUN is a band you should follow if you are into Folk, Power, Death and/or Melodic Metal.