Editor’s Playlist – 23 March 2015

We’ve FINALLY recovered from our hangover and post-festival lurgy of Hammerfest, so it’s officially back to business here at Soundscape. Here’s this week’s edition of our playlist – either listen to single tracks below or stream the whole thing on our last.fm page.

Amaranthe – Amaranthine
We were recently lucky enough to see Amaranthe play in Manchester (you can see our review of the night here) and one of the highlights of the set was when they played their somewhat slower track Amaranthine. It always makes for a magical atmosphere when the crowd sings the words back the band, but the passion and sheer volume of the crowd’s vocal delivery really made the show feel like something else. A stunning rendition of a stunning song – and one I’ll remember for a long time.

Halo Tora – Age Of Terror
Halo Tora have just released their new single Age Of Terror, along with a video for it, and it’s quite the grower. The vocals have this wonderful smooth tone to them and the chorus features one of those lines that will no-doubt get stuck into your head. Coupled with the ethereal tone to the guitars which gives the track this slight air of mystery, it makes for an all-round relaxing and chilled out listen. Great stuff!

Ancestral Legacy – Bone Code
Bone Code is the opening track of Ancestral Legacy’s latest album Terminal and it’s essentially the perfect blend of melody and heaviness. Beginning with a fairly sparse piano line accompanied by sweetly-sung female vocals, before you even know what’s happening, the band launches into an all-out aural assault on your ears with brutally heavy instrumentation topped off with powerfully-delivered harsh vocals. Nice! The track then progresses in this manner for a while before stripping back into a melodic section accompanied with strings, almost like Ancestral Legacy have gone full-circle, and then once again there’s another heavy section. Check this song out – you won’t be disappointed.

Serpentyne – Boudicca
One of the best things about Serpentyne is the fact they aren’t quite like any other band I’ve come across, and a band doing their own thing is sadly a rarity in this day and age. The song sounds like a traditional folk song, yet there’s also a modernness and crispness. The female vocals are beautifully delivered and the whistle will no-doubt make you want to enthusiastically dance along to the song – definitely an achievement not to be sniffed at! This band sounds like they’d be great in a live environment.

Skálmöld – Að vetri
“Oh, but you included Skálmöld in last week’s playlist!” I hear you say! Well, considering I’ve pretty much only been listening to Skálmöld repeatedly since last Monday, it definitely seemed right to include them this time round as well – and besides, this is a damn good song after all! Að vetri is certainly one of the highlights of Skálmöld’s most recent opus Með vættum and it was an absolute treat to witness it live at this year’s Hammerfest (see our review here) – Að vetri somehow manages to pack even more of a punch in a live environment than it does on CD! Just wait until you see all that guitar tapping from Baldur and þráinn.