PANYCHIDA - Haereticalia - The Night Battles

Panychida - Haereticalia – The Night Battles (2016, Cursed records)

When a record is released on the last day of the month it is difficult for us reviewers to actually listen and review the thing and in my case to add it to the Month’s best records. It might be a sad excuse because I received it a long ago and I just didn’t got to it until just now. Their Pagan Metal from Czech Republic was released on the 30th of May.

Prior to continuying, I must admit not being a huge fan of the Pagan Metal genre but with my great openess I’ve wanted to listen to this album to at least consider and demonstrate my good will as a music reviewer.

Haereticalia is a melodic album that is mostly mid tempo and that showcases mostly its guitarist’s melodic riffing. As with Pagan Metal in general I think it is a great album to drink beer to during the cold winters we have up here in the North.

On the plus side, ‘’Josafat (The Gathering)’’ is a great song that reminds me of the great era of Windir. In fact, the album suffers from this ever going comparison with a band that I followed during its superb tenure. The fact that it is no longer, Windir has left a permanent mark and reference in my mind when I think of melodic Metal.

Panychida, has not the epic scope that Windir achieved but they sure have nice rolling tunes to drink beer to. With ‘’Perchtenlaufen’’ they have made a melodic, yet cheesy, nice triptych.  

It is not that it is a bad album, it is pretty decent in fact, but they show many glimpses of brilliant songs. They just need to be more constant and mature and a little bit of edit as it is for the folk instruments. The world doesn’t need another Finntroll. Still, hand me that bottle and crank the volume we are in for another listen.

7.0