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Dawn Of Frost is the first release from Finland's Frosttide, a band of five young hopefuls throwing their gauntlet into the folk metal arena. With so many mediocre bands flooding the market today it takes something very special to attract any sort of positive attention to a new band. It is with great happiness that I can proclaim that Frosttide have actually managed to accomplish this!
The songs are all interesting, generally upbeat folk metal songs very much in the style of Victory Songs-era Ensiferum. They also make use of atmospheric acoustic and clean guitar passages, again in a style similar to Ensiferum with mood setting keyboards haunting the background whilst the hammer blows of the drum and bass pound out the beat. The main difference is in the vocals with Joni Snoro favoring a deep growl slightly more akin to Amon Amarth's Johan Hegg. The vocals are good but due to the lack of variation are also the weak point of the EP.
A band of experienced musicians that had only been together since autumn 2009 would have struggled to make such a high class EP as this. However, the young age and inexperience of this group of Finns makes this accomplishment even more astounding! If Frosttide can find their own sound in the folk metal genre they have the talent to make it huge. The Ensiferum-worship on this EP is a little too blatant for them to really stand apart at the moment but I get the feeling this will change as the band grows and matures. All the same, this is a really fantastic EP that I highly recommend to any and all fans of folk metal! It available to download for free at Last.fm/music/Frosttide so there's no reason not to give it a listen! For sheer enjoyment this EP gets 10/10, but from a more critical perspective 8.5/10 is more realistic.
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