The leading warriors of Australian Battle Metal have finally arrived with their first era entitled ONLY THE BRAVE RETURN. A 50-minute epic journey displaying an array of blackened melodic death metal, of course mixed with elements of medieval folk music and battle cries. Each song on the album also represents a chapter in the coinciding novel, based on an original fantasy story created by the band.
Turisas is a Finnish folk metal band from Hämeenlinna. They were founded in 1997 by Mathias Nygård and Jussi Wickström and named after an ancient Finnish god of war. Turisas combine elements of folk metal and power metal, with strong influences from symphonic metal as well. The album title Battle Metal has given rise to the term "battle metal" being used as a description of folk metal (as stated by Metal Hammer magazine) but it may not be a canonical metal subgenre.
Finntroll is a finnish folk metal band that combines black metal with a Finnish form of polka called Humppa. Although they are from Finland, Finntroll's lyrics are in Swedish (the country's second official language), because Swedish sounds "damn trollish", according to the band's first vocalist, Katla (whose native language is Swedish). History Finntroll was founded in 1997, by Teemu "Somnium" Raimoranta (R.I.P. March 16th 2003), guitarist of Impaled Nazarene, and Jan "Katla" Jämsen. Their first demo, Rivfader, was recorded about a year later, in 1998.
There are two artists using this name: a Swedish vikingarock band and a German pagan/viking metal band. 1. Hel is a vikingarock band from Sweden which in the beginning was tied to Ultima Thule's record label, and later they produced their music through their own label, Peanut Music AB. The group, which consists of Malin Pettersson (vocal), Ulrica Pettersson (vocal), Esa Rosenström (guitar), Piere Karlsson (drums), Stefan Johansson (bass) and Adde Norlin (guitar and keyboard), is based in Eskilstuna, Södermanland.
Mock & Toof are two London based producers who record for Tiny Sticks (UK), Mule Musiq (Japan) & Dfa Records's Death From Abroad (US) imprint*. They were initially noticed with their remix for The Juan MacLean, which was quickly followed up by their re-edit of Madonna's Lycra Virgin. Following more remixes for the likes of Hot Chip, The Scissor Sisters & Maps, Mock & Toof strengthened their position with widely acclaimed singles for Tiny Sticks (Black Jub), Mule Musiq (Zomby) & Rvng Intl (Digits).