Been meaning to stock the US releases from Finntroll for awhile. By now, I'm sure that anyone whose been listening to extreme metal over the past ten years at least knows who Finntroll are, that absolutely ridiculous but awesomely heavy and infectious Finnish band whose members pretend that they are trolls and who play an anthemic hybrid of blackened death metal and a form of Finnish folk music called "Humppa" that's best described as a kind of energetic polka music. It sounds like an unlikely mix if you haven't heard it before, but the fact is that Finntroll's music is absurdly fun to listen to, and I'm constantly playing the three albums that have been issued through Century Media here in the states (Jaktens Tid, Nattfodd and Ur Jordens Djup). Granted, you've got to have a sense of humour to listen to this stuff, I mean, c'mon, these guys pretend that they're trolls, but their music is so insanely catchy and epic and crushing, I can't stop recommending them to everybody.

On their second album, 2001's Jaktens Tid, Finntroll perfected their blackened death metal polka, delivering thirteen songs of ultra catchy heaviness, troll-obsessed lyrics suing in Finnish, rad troll-warrior album artwork, blasts of horns and war drums, insanely catchy hooks, a keyboard player named Trollhorn who lays down abdurd accordian-like oompah melodies and symphonic strings over Finntroll's crushing thrashy riffs, piano, the chanting vocals known as Finnish "Joik-singing" that almost sound like Native American chants, and of course, tons of humppa! This shit is so catchy, it's little surprise that Finntroll became huge after this came out, touring the world and taking their trollish polka-metal to the masses. Doesn't change the fact that is still an amazingly weird death metal album, like a mead-drenched Wagnerian death metal hoedown, crushing, drunk, silly, and catchy as hell!