Varus – A New Dawn

The first thing that comes to my mind listening to this Varus “A New Dawn” is that it seems that Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson ruined all the chances of other Rock or Metal bands using the flute as an influential instrument. It is the impression that it gets while hearing to “The Minstrels Chant” because it instantly took me back to everything I heard from Jethro Tull – by the way, my child of the night, a great band for you to know. Many Metal artists as Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris are confessed fans of the band.

Ok, aside all that, the music Varus present is remarkable and astonishing due to the combination of Extreme Metal music and Classical Music with a more opera feeling grip. “A New Dawn” combines with great happiness these two elements being able to maintain the needed heavyness and dark and gloomy atmosphere. In no way this album lacks any of this because of the strong combination of Classical Music elements. In fact, I forgot to add that besides all the classical elements the band mixes strong doses of Folk Music being a hybrid of both. Varus are the first I’ve heard that combine the two features giving the fan a bright and shiny, though with the presence the required elements to be an Extreme Metal band. Of course, there is a lot of despair and grief in their music, but also there is some kind of a hidden happiness and the strange feeling of a certain fulfillment and satisfaction.

The atmosphere created by Varus helps the fan imagine and wonder a world where magic and some kind of hope walk hand by hand. The music here isn’t sad, well, not happy as well but the feeeling is brighter than it looks. Musicwise, the band was able to make a combination of Power, Folk, and Symphonic Black Metal that made everybody – I eman all fans – happy and satisfied. The word Black metal opera wouldn’t be wrong to explain what the fan can experiment here. Varus went beyond where Cruachan stopped, if you get me right. They added much more classical passages and folk elements to their music creating beautiful and shiny passages as the keyboard bridge to the guitar solo in “Wandel Der Zeit.” The myriad of folk instruments as the flute, mandolins, and the harpsichord are very well used. Lord of the Rings fans will understand the comparison I’m trying to make here; imagine the music of the elves sang by orcs, voilà, that’s it!

Varus “A New Dawn” was released on June 27th.

Track Listing:

  1. The Awakening
  2. Tränk dein Herz
  3. A New Dawn
  4. Ascheregen
  5. Ein Lebewohl
  6. Wandel der Zeit
  7. The Minstrels Chant
  8. Die letzte Schenke

Watch “A New Dawn” official lyric video here:

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