When it comes to art, being original is difficult. There's nary a thing you can do without someone else having already tread that ground. Also, anything you do is going to be held up to previous works because humans think in terms of association. Doing something different is a risk that can lead to great things or abysmal failure. In the world of Heavy Metal especially, the fervent love of the genre can turn fans into rabid elitists that view music in an almost authoritarian light. However Metal itself is a deviance from the norm, the continued pushing of boundaries and thinking in unorthodox terms has led to a lot of unique and interesting sounds. Now, how does this Ted Talk relate to ICETHURS? What I'm saying here is to expect something different.

My first indication that this was going to be unusual was the surreal, almost psychedelic album art. A squirrel glancing through what appears to be a portal between two varying landscapes led me to a definite "What the hell is going on here?" moment. (The squirrel? It's Ratatoskr, of course!) This coupled with the fact that some things are either not translated well or are concepts I'm not familiar with (If anyone knows what a "Compotator" or a "Razguliai" are, I'd be down to learn) gave me a welcome sense of uncertainty. Sometimes not knowing what to expect makes the experience better.

"Unlocked Door" begins with a straight Metal riff accompanied by what sounds like a Folksy celebratory tune. I'm not good enough with my ear to identify the instrument, but it sounds like some kind of woodwind. It lends a renaissance fare-type flare to the overall sound. The vocals then follow, which are a mix of typical Extreme Metal vocals (I was reminded of GOATWHORE's vocalist), as well as clean female vocals. I don't understand Russian so the words were lost on me, but the general idea from what I could gather is a lot of mythology and Pagan themes. The clean singing here isn't haphazardly thrown in; it doesn't feel forced or contrived for mass appeal. It's an integral part of the sound, even if that may be hard to define.

What kind of music does ICETHURS play? I'm glad you didn't ask because that's hard to define. It's Metal, for sure. It's Folk influenced as previously mentioned. It's Progressive. The third song on the album starts out sounding like Thrash Metal before it veers into different realms. There's a lot going on in this release and all of it is interesting. It's heavy, it's intricate, and it's complicated. There are some solid solos ("White Road" and "War"), there's heavy bass, there's even a dash of electronic elements (although very minor). Everything is mixed in great and there are several layers to every song worth exploring multiple times. It all comes together to form a high-end buffet of heaviness. Art is food for the soul and ICETHURS gives you some exotic cuisine so to speak.

I'm glad that ICETHURS had the tenacity to stick to their musical experiment. Maybe it wasn't that out of the ordinary for them, I have no idea what's going on in their part of the world. Maybe musical collages are the norm.  For me however, this was a pleasant surprise; an atypical type of Metal that fuses different sounds and non-standard song structure to make something that's straddles the line between melodic, folk, and heavy. I hate that inevitably I need to compare it to something else to give context.

If I had to pitch something similar, I would say fans of UNEXPECT, GONIN-ISH, or even FINNTROLL may dig on this. As a guy who is more typically in the Death side of the Metal spectrum, I found myself giving this a few re-listens to catch everything that was going on. It's definitely worth checking out anytime you want to hear something different.