turisas stand up and fight

Released: 28 February 2011 Label: Century Media

Despite the lavish praise heaped upon them, 2004’s debut Battle Metal and its follow-up The Varangian Way were actually pretty patchy affairs, saved by the inclusion of a few real belters. A gimmick will take you so far, but the pressure is now on for everyone’s favourite Finns to deliver a true corker of an album. And you know what? They’ve only gone and bloody done it.
         

Regardless of how much you might like the previous two albums, they pale into insignificance next to these nine songs. With swords raised high, Turisas are running into a brave new world where they are well and truly set to finally claim their crown as the unchallenged kings of epic metal. So bombastic is Stand Up and Fight that the likes of Manowar sound like a garage band in comparison.
       

Panoramic in its vision and merciless in its execution, this album not only features a generous helping of fantastic, fist-pumping metal magic, but also ups the ante by including some expertly crafted classical orchestrations and overblown moments of theatrical musical drama, with Hunting Pirates being the best song Leonard Bernstein never wrote for a Broadway show.
      

On an album full of highlights, Take the Day builds magnificently from a brooding intro to its shattering ‘Rising, fighting, lightning, striking’ hook and is already ear-marked as a live favourite, while End of an Era superbly combines a sense of the grandiose with galloping metal rhythms, before culminating in an awesome chorus which starts big and then gets bigger. If Turisas can nail this material live, their live shows are set to be very special.
        

Stand Up and Fight will leave you breathless, battered and bruised. When you come round, you won’t know whether to drink beer, bang your head or rampage through your neighbourhood with a battleaxe. Perhaps the only solution is to do all of them and enjoy every last minute of the madness.

by Marcus Jervis