WE ILA

Thork is a band without biography, so it's quite difficult to gather some information about it, and more, a true information about it especially if you don't understand French. Anyhow, some hints can be found from here and there: Thork was founded at 1998 by Sébastien Fillion and Antoine Aureche and later Michel Lebeau, Samuel Maurin and Claire Northey joined the band. By the time the band was very young and the players were just a teenagers, except Samuel Maurin who was a bit older.

According to them, they played dark progressive folk and that it is, for their original sound is bottomless dark, truly progressive and deeply complex with folk influences appearing for example in Claire Northey's violin playing. The darkness Thork achieves to insert into their music is so thick it propably could be cut with a knife. Most of the ideas and influences comes from celtic and medieval music and issues, yet also metal, classical and even jazz influences can be found in there, but their sound is still extremely original without a slighest idea of similar band.

Their second album We-ila is an utter masterpiece! Put the record into your player, set volume level a bit higher than normally and push play... The first thought is 'Ouch, Now we go...' and within few seconds you realise that you are listening at something great. Within few minutes you Know you are listening to something Great!

The album starter L'Origine is a real mind blower, it starts with a really tight drums and heavy guitar. Soon one of the finest singer ever walked on earth joins in and the song is pure feast, balancing somewhere between heavy progressive metal and dark, frightening folk, a Thork's own playground. They compose a brilliant mix of violin driven headbanging with a very emotional vocals. Later it calms down and turns to dark beauty leaving most of the metal behind.

What we are talking about here is really dark and beautiful prog with a nice multilayered complexity, very professional playing and lots of instruments. At times the music varies from violin oriented dark folk, from mind blowing heavy metal bursts into beautiful vocal melodies. There is no room for improvement - everything is just perfect!

The second track Delectable Ennui is one of those rarities that makes you cry inside that 'how can anything be so f...g Great! and nutshells the brilliant idea of Thork's music very nicely. It's a slow tempo darkness, stunning vocals and choirs, that goes on and on and one can only wonder how can they put so many feelings in so less notes. Then comes a short interlude Errance and massive Ea marches in. It makes you piss into your pants in fear and cry for the beauty of music!

The feeling througout the record is like you were in some fantasy novel's caves or castles following some dark rituals in trance. Not in vain of Carmina Burana but something totally different, scary and beautiful.

After a short interlude the feast continues. Dance de la Terre joins in being the most rhytmically complex, most NIL-like piece here. Even vocals are performed by Roselyne Berthet. It makes you shiver. The last track is no exception, being just as great as everything on this disc.

No weak moments, total brilliance from the very first sound into the last one. This is certainly one of the best prog records ever made - it brilliantly combines quite a lot of the aspects I seek from progressive rock and music overall. At first, it's really complex using many levels of simultaneous themes, odd time signatures, changes, long and complex compositions... Then is the mind blowing power, metal is used very carefully and sophisticatedly. The vocal parts are of top quality also, not only the lead vocals but choirs, samples, spoken words, everything. And then there's the instrumental quality, how all those are playing together, how the ideas are rich for example using the violin and how they never fall into for example individual soloing. This album cannot be recommended highly enough. Just buy it!