Style: Folk metal, epic doom metal (Mixed vocals, mostly clean)
Recommended for fans of: Eluveitie, Summoning, Krux
Country: Sweden
Release date: 14 February 2025
Do you ever long for ‘the good old days’? Back when we all had to walk uphill in the snow both ways to get anywhere and ‘microplastics’ were just a fancy name for your soldier figurines? Maybe you want to go back even further than that: perhaps you long to be elegantly memorialized in a Renaissance painting, or you just want to wear the cool bird mask without people thinking you’re weird. Well, Swedish band Apocalypse Orchestra has got you covered! Their latest album, A Plague Upon Thee, aims to evoke the grandeur and direness of living in Medieval times through epic doom metal led by folk instruments. Will you be down with A Plague Upon Thee’s sickness, or will it leave you homesick for the here and now?
A Plague Upon Thee features a style of doom metal that lives and dies by the hurdy gurdy, acting in place of lead guitars and forming the central melody of virtually every track. A bevy of other folk instruments are used as well, including bagpipes and mandolas, but they more often than not play a supporting role in the songwriting. Guitars make themselves known as well and are mostly used to add rhythmic texture to pieces, save for a few tracks where they take on a more prominent role (“From the Athanor”, “Glass and Sun”). One would expect dire and foreboding metal fitting of an unstoppable pestilence based solely on the album art and title, but A Plague Upon Thee opts instead for climactic grandeur through enormous choruses and mystical churning melodies. Dynamics are the main songwriting tool, whether pieces wax and wane as a singular unit (“Virago”) or oscillate between quieter and more explosive moments (“Glass and Sun”).
The use of hurdy gurdy as a leading instrument is a magnificent idea given its versatility: its ability to both drone and create melody means that it can be used for anything from evoking a powerful hypnotic ambiance to creating an ineffable danciness. On A Plague Upon Thee, it teeters back and forth between droning atmospherics (“Virago”, “Glass and Sun”) and melodic focus (“Tempest”, “Anchorhold”, “Saint Yersinia”1), adding ornamentation where necessary. On opener “Virago”, the hurdy gurdy even gets its own solo, becoming much more active and hitting a noticeably higher register; on the bridge of “Tempest”, it becomes fervent and heavily ornamented, accompanied by a powerful harsh vocal performance. The hurdy gurdy and other folk instruments come across a bit ‘clean’ on A Plague Upon Thee in that they sound immaculately performed without any blemishes or imperfections, in the process stripping them of their ‘organic’ feeling. While this isn’t necessarily a problem as it creates a charming Runescape feel and is likely a necessity to prevent the otherwise maximal layering from becoming too crowded, it does cause some of the folk instrumentation to blend together and makes distinguishing one from another challenging.2
A Plague Upon Thee’s biggest ail, however, involves breaking out of the songwriting mold that is established in the first couple tracks: virtually every track follows a similar structure and the folk instrumentation takes on a very narrow sonic palette. On “Virago”, for example, the hurdy gurdy oscillates between mystical droning and melodicism in a grand and epic songwriting framework; following track “Tempest” has the hurdy gurdy oscillating between mystical droning and melodicism in a grand and epic songwriting framework; after that, “Glass and Sun” uses the hurdy gurdy to… you get what I’m going for. Every song on A Plague Upon Thee is without a doubt fabulously executed, but the repetition over its runtime contaminates the infectious atmospheres, and by “Sacrament of Avarice”, I’m quite tired of hearing the instruments used in the exact same way again. Even the penultimate interlude “To Arrive” sounds like a truncated version of the more extended pieces.
“From the Athanor” introduces some much-needed variety into A Plague Upon Thee by using guitar as the songwriting focus, featuring a bona fide solo that isn’t restrained by the melodic palette of its accompanying folk instruments. The occasional use of harsh vocals also keeps things fresh, particularly on “Tempest” and “Saint Yersinia”, where they are thoughtfully accompanied by more tense and fervent instrumental passages. Furthermore, Many of A Plague Upon Thee’s more interesting ideas struggle to support the album as a whole but are wonderful when the tracks are listened to individually, including the dueling guitar-bagpipe solo on “Glass and Sun”, the particularly striking chorus of “Saint Yersinia”, and the delightfully skipping ornamentation of “Anchorhold”.
It’s hard to deny the sheer brilliance of Apocalypse Orchestra’s conceit, as their hurdy-gurdy-led epic doom instantly lends itself to the grandest of Medieval fantasy soundscapes. However, safe songwriting along with a touch of instrumental sterility prevents A Plague Upon Thee from fully embodying the dramatic punch it reaches for. Should Apocalypse Orchestra experiment a bit more within the (relatively loose) confines of their instruments and lean fully into the organic imperfections that give them character, they will have a record that not only sounds great on a playlist, but also comes across as a complete package. I wouldn’t say to avoid A Plague Upon Thee like, well, the plague, but it does not get a wholehearted recommendation from me unless you are positively dying for Medieval metal.
Recommended Tracks: Virago, Saint Yersinia, Tempest
You may also like: Caladan Brood, Saor, Capilla Ardiente
Final verdict: 6.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Despotz Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Apocalypse Orchestra is:
– Erik Larsson (vocals, cittern, guitars, lute, mandola)
– Mikael Lindström (bagpipes, hurdy gurdy, rauschpfeife, nyckelharpa, vocals)
– Rikard jansson (bass, vocals)
– Andreas Skoglund (drums, vocals)
– Jonas Lindh (guitars, vocals)
- This is a particularly fun play on words: Yersinia is the genus of bacterium that causes Bubonic Plague, named after Alexandre Yersin, the 19th century doctor who discovered it. ↩︎
- Apocalypse Orchestra’s bandcamp notes that they utilize ‘theatrical performances, sometimes actors and dancers, fire, and projected animation’ during their live performances. I can only imagine they have an incredible live show, not just because of the visual interest noted above, but because the live setting would really allow the folk instrumentation to shine. ↩︎
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