Saltatio Mortis, or “Dance of Death”, has recently released its seventh studio album Wer Wind Saet, which follows a line of consistent production since the band’s conception in 2000. The Medieval metallers, hailing from Germany, have combined folk music with metal to invoke a time machine that transports listeners back to an age of the Chaucerian knight who feasts on meat and mead whilst preparing for great battles and jousting contests as he plays the courtly lover, by flashing his very long sword and very big codpiece, in an attempt to woo his unrequited love.
Saltatio Mortis’s passion for medieval folklore and culture is rendered implicit in the band’s music through the creative use of unique instruments, including the bagpipes, the lute, the shawm, the davul and the hurdy-gurdy – the kind used decades ago by medieval minstrels. The band’s fusion of folk and metal music transcends the barrier of time by exploring the complexities of life’s age-old conundrums: love, passion, life and death. Wer Wind Saet will make listeners want to dance a jig, bang their heads, serenade a lover and don a kilt … all at once. The lack of prolonged guitar riffs and heavy distortion is likely to disappoint your run of the mill metalhead but the album has successfully manipulated the metal genre to create a brand of sound that is beautifully and brutally reminiscent of the celebrations and tragedies of medieval society.
The merry band of musicians, who have a significant following in their homeland, boast medieval names to compliment their stage persona: Alea of Modest (vocals, bagpipes, shawm); Lasterbalk the blasphemer (davul, drums, percussion, programming); Falk Irmenfried of Hasenmümmelstein (bagpipes, shawm, hurdy-gurdy, vocals); El Silbador (bagpipes, shawm); Brother Frank (bass, fretless bass, chapman stick, electric upright bass); Samoel (guitar, lute, cistercian) and Jean Méchant called The Tambour (drums, percussion, vocals). Although Wer Wind Saet can be called a success within its context, the sub-genre of medieval metal is likely to remain most attractive to a core group of European metallers, allowing it to remain sufficiently ‘underground’ – enough to attract new listeners and deter cynics.
