Album review: Equilibrium - Sagas

I have to confess: I came to Sagas with a full set of prior prejudices. Knowing that Equilibrium were a self-described folk-metal band, I was expecting an incongruous combination of metallic rhythm sections with twee folk instrumentation over the top. And that’s largely what I found; what I didn’t expect was that I’d actually quite enjoy it.

No, really. OK, so I’m not going to rush off and spend a month’s wages on replica swords and furry boots from Viking-Re-Enactment.com, but my primary reaction to Sagas was a big silly grin. Whether they meant to or not, Equilibrium managed to squeeze a lot of fun into this album.

I could easily be mistaken, of course. All of Equilibium’s lyrics and song titles are written in their native German, and I only know that they use Germanic folklore and mythology as topics because I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere; for all I could tell, the songs on Sagas could be about reality television or the comparative merits of Hamburg’s used car dealerships.

But I think even the most stubborn motoring enthusiast would find it hard to compose an album as flamboyantly and unashamedly epic as Sagas. And I use the word ‘epic’ here not in it’s modern context as meaning ‘out of the ordinary’ or simply ‘very big’, but in the sense the Ancient Greeks coined the word – heroic narratives of legendary stature. Equilibrium are storytellers; you don’t have to understand the story for that to be obvious.

But here’s the caveat – epic, in this case, comes with more than a slight flavour of cheesiness. Sagas is built on huge cinematic backgrounds, with drums that vary from a stately march to a suicide charge while roaming a battlefield beneath glowering thunderclouds of bassy guitar and gothic keyboards … see, the atmosphere has gotten to me already. But over this moody bedrock Equilibrium build a Medieval town of folky strings and pipes playing bright hey-nonny-nonny melodies that wouldn’t sound out of place at your local Morris dancer’s meeting.

Once you add the vocals, which are delivered in the standard death-metal demon-from-the-Exorcist rasps, Equilibrium look like a ridiculous proposition on paper. But they live up to their name by balancing the two sides of their sound perfectly; oh yes, Sagas is pretty silly-sounding (with all due respect to anyone of Germanic origins – after all, Anglo-Saxon retro-folk sounds pretty ludicrous to modern ears as well), but it works on its own terms.

I’m serious. The World Of Warcraft people should hire these guys to soundtrack all forthcoming expansion packs … in fact, screw that, Peter Jackson should completely redo the Lord Of The Rings movies with Equilibrium soundtracking all the battle scenes. The CGI/computer game vibe is amplified by the glossy production and cartoonish velocity; it’s almost hyper-real, more compelling than it should be, powered purely by the power of its own knowing overstatement.

Much like Dragonforce, Equilibrium can get away with being completely bombastic and overblown because they really are that damned good. The guitar solo in “Die Weide und der Fluß” is assembled with an exceptional ear for detail and fluidity; “Blut im Auge” features moments of gruff power metal perfection; “Verrat” sounds like Carcass in their prime (at least until the strings and pipes kick in), and “Snuffel” has solid chugging chops that Lemmy would be proud of.

Sagas really does sound quite ridiculous a lot of the time, though - the pan-pipe synth patches especially, which push things almost to the point of pastiche. And the closing instrumental “Mana” is a whole baroque-pastoral Medieval metal-opera in its own right – all seventeen triumphant minutes of it, with no one riff staying ascendant for more than sixty seconds.

But mark my words – Sagas is a lot of fun if you approach it properly. Don’t take Equilibrium too seriously; just fire up your favourite computer RPG or, if you’re out on the road, wind the windows down and crank it up, imagine your car is an arcane orkish battle-engine, and see how many of the forces of Good you can crush to a pulp on your drive home …

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