Hello all I'm WHiCK and this is my first post on Loadown. Please hold your applause til after my introduction. You can expect high quality rips from me in the folk, viking, melodeath and death metal genres. So without further ado one of my favourite albums of the year so far....Shangren hails from Australia and if you had to put them in a genre it would have to be oriental folk metal. Right from the get go Shangren's title track and the first song on the EP lets you know there sound in just about 2 minutes. They clearly want the listeners attention to be on the vocals and folk elements as the traditional metal instruments take a back seat. They have an impeccable talent for combing an oriental sound with grim black metal vocals especially as this genre is somewhat uncharted territory. Generally in most folk metal albums, even some of my favourites, the folk elements sometimes feel monotonous and rarely do the bands switch it up. In my opinion this is the best thing about Shangren as the folksy melodies are diverse which keeps things fresh from track to track. All in all this is defiantly one of my front runners for 2011 and the only downside was that this was a EP. Currently they are unsigned so this was an independent production but that alone carries some optimism as this sounds incredibly good and one would think with a label they could take it "Over the Top" (insert Sylvester Stallone voice here).
