Ok... Lets get to the intro to this long post. I am a folk metal fan. A Huge one... I was a metalhead for a long time, and abandoned folk metal because I thought it all sounded like skyclad. I was wrong. Ensiferum turned me on to EXTREME Folk metal a few years ago. I can't stop listening to this stuff. Since then I have gotten into Wintersun, Korpiklaani, Finntroll, Tyr, Eluveitie, Cruachan, Amorphis, Mithotyn, Windir, Manegarm, Suidakra, Equillibrium, Moonsorrow, Melechesh, Falkenbach, and Wuthering Heights. I absolutely love the combination of extreme metal with folk music. Especially if it's dark evil folk music or exotic folk music like middle eastern, finnish, oriental, or dark norweigan folk seen in windir (especially)...
So when I hear some fucking stupid SJW trashing ALL folk metal for being Racist (because it's all viking metal to them, when it isn't...) I get pissed off to the extreme. Karl Spracklin is a fucking tool. He is shitting on the most musically diverse kind of metal out there! NOTHING is close to how unique folk metal sounds. One band will sound drastically different from others and I love that. Apparently Spracklin doesn't like that at all. All because of a few Viking metal bands. Well Fuck him because Viking Metal Kicks ass!
Viking Metal and Nazi's don't have a connection. Nazi's latch on to pagan bands all the time. It's not the band's fault that this happens. They just like talking about history of their people. The thing is that all the viking metal bands are from Scandanavia. Why would they not write about the viking age. Vikings play a huge role in the history of those countries. And before Christians attempted to brainwash vikings by force in Norway, vikings were the only history they had. Why would they embrace something they view as a foreign influence (Christianity) over something that was their own? They wouldn't. It doesn't matter how "White" their Ancestors are, they will still reference their heritage. That's the point of Folk Music. To Embrace folklore from your area. They have no other folklore in Sweden and Norway but viking folklore.
What this stupid author doesn't realize is that not ALL folk metal bands are viking metal bands. Sprackling is trying to make them all look like viking metal. Viking metal is a type of folk metal but it does not encompass all folk metal. In fact about 50% of folk metal is NOT viking metal. Some of these non viking metal bands get labelled as viking metal bands but in reality they are not. I will get into this later.
But what really pissed me off is the fact that this idiot sprackling tried to trash the 5 most popular folk metal bands with stupid BS excuses. The Author trashes every single one of these bands for not being folk at all, complains about the lack of non white and non male band members in all of these bands, tries to say Eluveitie doesn't use Swiss/Gaulish folk instruments (HELLO! I know the difference between and rips of Irish folk ones, Tyr doesn't play any folk music at all (well they don't but they do use folk melodies, they just play them in a more metal way than what most people would expect, their older stuff is more like folk than their later stuff), and tries to say all of these bands are racist, because get this, they write about local folklore from their area, and because it's all a "male power fantasy" they are being racist and sexist! FUCK YOU SPRACKLING.
Sprackling conveniently ignores folk metal that doesn't talk about vikings. Like Each and every Middle eastern folk metal band and Asian Folk Metal Band (Tang Dynasty, etc), and every and all European folk metal band that doesn't talk about viking history/legends or doesn't talk about legends at all and instead talks about other topics. This includes the following bands:
Ensiferum (Finnish Mythology - the Kalevala is their influence.The Kalevala is a Finnish Epic Poem telling a massive story that starts at the beginning of the Finnish Creation Myth and goes on to tell the story of several Finnish Shamanstic Heros in a war between several sides... You can read the story here. None of this is viking metal related. Viking metal talks about NORSE mythology not finnish mythology.
Amorphis also writes about the Kalevala..
Windir : A band that talks about the history of the town in norway that they are from. This is more of a history than mythology based band. They focus on how one farmer saved their town in the middle ages... None of their lyrics are viking metal, even though they are labeled as viking metal.
Eluveitie isn't viking metal by a long shot. They talk about the Gauls fight against the Romans in one album but mostly they talk about the Gauls religious practises. That isn't viking metal or racist in any way..
Finntroll talk about old folk tales spread by finnish people to scare off Christian traveling ministers trying to convert Finnish People to Christianity. These folk talks talk about Trolls Killing Christians mostly..
Korpiklaani has mostly devolved into a drinking band. But they used to talk about Finnish tribal life in the woods. Their lyrics were mostly finnish. They were not viking metal in anyway and in fact were very ANTI viking like a lot of finnish folk metal bands...
Cruachan talks about the Pre Christian Pagans in Ireland. Once again not viking metal and not racist...
Wintersun is often called folk metal but they really aren't. They write about loneliness a lot.
Suidakra talks about pagan mythology, mostly Scottish and Irish.
Equillibrium talks about Germanic folk tales.
Moonsorrow talks about Finnish Folk tales and such. They take a very dark turn and focus mostly on Paganism dying to christianity (I Believe... I could be wrong)
Melechesh talks about mostly Sumerian Mythology. As far from viking metal as you can get...'
Wuthering Heights talks mostly about Lord of the rings stuff.... NOT viking metal!
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From the list of bands I have listened to, only Tyr, Mithotyn, Manegarm, and Falkenbach are Viking Metal. That's 4 out of 17! A lot more Pagan Metal, but once again Pagan Metal =/= Nazi Metal. There is no connection between Pagan Metal and Naziism, despite what these fucking turds in the SJW Circles Think!
Wintersun, Korpiklaani, Finntroll, Tyr, Eluveitie, Cruachan, Amorphis,
Mithotyn, Windir, Manegarm, Suidakra, Equillibrium, Moonsorrow,
Melechesh, Falkenbach,
It's none of these bands fault that their history or folklore is primary white people based. Anyone who uses that stupid excuse to trash bands like this can go fuck himself...
This idiot is trashing the best music out there now. Folk metal kills all other kinds of metal completely in terms, of melody. You can't get better than the melody found in a lot of these bands. Windir, Melechesh, Wuthering Heights and Ensiferum (which he conveniently misspelled as "enisferum!" - Check your spelling idiot!) are amazing bands. The epicness of them is beyond anything power metal could ever do, or Melodic Death, or Death Metal, or Metalcore, or anything else really... He conveniently bashes the 5 examples of Folk Metal as not folk influenced which is stupid. Their melodies are folk influenced, you fucking idiot. Some might not show it much by playing folk instruments but it 's still folk influenced... This idiot is trying to bash the genre for stupid reasons and he really has to learn to fuck off...
