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.

These troll-obsessed maniacs returned in 2004 with Nattfodd, which might just be their heaviest, catchiest album ever. The "trollish hoedown metal" is still in full force, a ferocious mixture of blackened death metal and traditional Finnish "humppa" music, and on this album, the band utilized even more of the traditional "Joik" music that was occasionally used on their previous album. "Joik" is a form of ancient Finnish chanting that sounds remarkably like the spiritual chants of Native Americans, and when Finntroll incorporates it into their crushing death metal, it's pretty weird stuff. The synthesizers are more prominent this time around too, filling the band's sound with accordian-like melodies and bombastic orchestral strings and blasting war-horns, and there's lots of cool choir parts, weirdo troll-jigs, huge gang choruses, evocative interludes of nothing but forest sounds, bizarre troll-speak, and parts where the music breaks off into jaunty mead-hall drinking songs. If you were into the trollish death metal polka of Jaktens Tid, man, this album is freaking essential, and for those of you who haven't yet experienced the absurd but totally infectious humppa metal of Finntroll, this is most definitely the album to start with! Some of the band's catchiest songs ever are on here, "Trollhammeren" and "Urswamp". Awesome.