Pagan metal is becoming more and more popular nowadays, with new bands such as Equilibrium and Eluveitie gathering hordes of fans. Celtic death metallers SuidAkrA don’t follow the modern trends and just continue doing what they’ve become known for: playing heavy melodic death metal with lots of celtic influences. Crógacht, the follow-up to their successful 2006 album Caledonia contains all the wartunes you could possible want. This means more of the same, and are we really waiting for something like that?

Truthfully, Crógacht must be the best album SuidAkrA has come up with, so far. Whether it has anything to do with the current three-piece setup in the band, I don’t know. But after an atmospheric intro, ‘Conlaoch’ is just the song you’ll want to hear. Aggressive, melodic and extremely catchy yet marvelously underground. After swinging your sword around, there’s the time to relax to tracks like ‘Feats Of War’. Lyrically it might be a moon towards mighty Mongolian warlords, but musically, it’s the most tranquil song that the band has to offer on this album. The firm clean vocals of warrior princess Tina Stabel still echo through the living room when the war opus ‘Shattering Swords’ kicks in. I can’t even begin to describe what kind of energy this song unleashed inside of me.

Musically, the band is still on good terms with the use of traditional Celtic instruments like the bagpipes and tin flute. It must be noted that Arkadius´ clean vocals sound great in combination with his death grunts and screams. Once again, the passages for vocal harmonies have been chosen extremely well.

There’s no denying it; after almost 14 years of existence and 8 studio albums, Crógacht delivers another devastating blow to the pagan / Celtic metal genre. If you are a fan of melodic death metal combined with Celtic melodies, be sure to check this one out.