Ur Falc'h ‎"Ur Falc'h" CD

After the absolutely excellent split with Heretic Blood, Ur Falc'h deliver to us their debut album. Licking my lips as I put it into the CD player (after an almost endless fortnight-long wait for it to come in the post), I was expecting to be greeted with the same round of epic pagan metal. There was no need to press the Play button to answer that question....
Mind you, although musically sticking to its guns, not perhaps in the exact same way. The production is better (something the album cover certainly doesn't tell you), and the songs sound a bit more, dare I say it, polished than the crude, coarse sounding 'Sur le Chemin....'. Not that any of that is bad, though. Quite the opposite indeed: this new doomier approach suits the band just as well as the frozen Nordic blast from before, and all the songs are equally as long and as mesmerising - even the intro's a long one(four minutes!). 'Prisonniers de la Tourmente' provides a mix of speed, aggression, breakdown and mid-tempo, not forgetting those folk subtleties across its ten-plus minute lifespan. We get much of the same for the rest of the album, aswell as a little more clean vocals and some howling-wolf samples in 'Le Rapace et sa Faux', but it's all more than enough to sustain interest and awe throughout. No complaints here, that's for sure.
I'm undecided as to whether or not they've truly topped their first release proper, but if not, almost certainly next time and also if not, this debut is no less savourous for it. How many bands have dreamed of a debut like this? Many. How many have made those dreams a reality? Ur Falc'h, seemingly, are one of the very few, and it's their consistency that makes them stand out. A triumphant world apart.

Out of the woods comes the debut full-length from this folk influenced black metal band hailing from Quebec. Arcane folk-passages gust across frozen landscapes carved by raw guitars to form an uncompromising bond between archaic roots and merciless winters.

Sample:

Sample: