Varg: Guten Tag

I recently went shopping for a new board game and asked the sales clerk if a certain game was fun. He told me that it all depends on whether or not I like games that rely on dice to determine the outcome of things. I've played dice games and I like dice games, but I couldn't tell whether this game would be any fun. A dice game, after a while, is a dice game no matter how dressed up it is to look like fantasy, science fiction, or whatever.

I think that so much of recent extreme metal is a little bit like shopping for a board game and discovering that so many of the elements are alike that you end up getting simply a new dice game or a card game or a cooperative game no matter what the actual content of the game really is. Everything is a variation on a theme, sometimes a good variation and sometimes a bad one. Whether listeners will like it often depends on whether they have already accepted that theme as fun or interesting. Viking metal--in all its variety--speaks to this condition regularly. As I listen to the recent spate of releases by Viking-oriented bands, all I can say is that they are flooding the market with possibly too much of a good thing.

With Guten Tag, Varg has given listeners a strong, competent album that delivers the goods but doesn't go out of its way to surprise them. The album, moreover, is quite long and the music borders on the repetitive. All of the songs have a similar feel to them. It's true that some of the opening riffs are pretty great, but they transition all too quickly into familiar thematic and melodic patterns. I liked this album, but I wanted to like it even more.

Track Listing:
1. Willkommen
2. Guten Tag
3. Frei wie der Wind
4. Was nicht darf
5. Blut und Feuer
6. Angriff
7. Horizont
8. A Thousand Eyes
9. Weider mal verloren
10. Gedanke und Erinnerung
11. Leben
12. Anti
13. Apokalypse

Added: November 3rd 2012
Reviewer: Carl Sederholm
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 2317
Language: english

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