ALBUM REVIEW: Todsünden – Feuerschwanz

What is the gift you probably didn’t ask for, but will make your Christmas season? It’s folk metal covers of everyone’s favourite songs; your favourites, your parents’, your best mates’ and your little sister’s. Well, FEUERSCHWANZ have brought you Todsünden – the best party starting record to pull out and introduce your most metal-sceptical relatives to the delights of heavy music. From BLOODHOUND GANG, ED SHEERAN and THE WEEKND to EUROPE and ABBA, across to AMON AMARTH, SABATON and RAMMSTEIN, it’s got a gift for everyone.

It’s genuinely hard to pick a highlight on Todsünden. The Bad Touch and Dragostea Din Tei will hit a strange sense of nostalgia and giddy delight for those of us born around the end of the last millennia. They’re the perfect silly renditions of the 90s and 00s that might make your dad chuckle, all while allowing you to throw some black metal poses and screech along to your heart’s content. There also couldn’t be a better opener than ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!; it instantly sets the tone for the joyous experience of this album, and what better start than some top-class metal dramatics reclaiming the 70s pop-glitz of the Swedish giants.

Der Graf, originally by DIE ÄRZTE, is genuinely quite heartfelt, and will go down well if you’re in the company of people who are fans of the punk original, while being something your more emo-inclined little brother might be into. It’s great to hear a set of German songs on this record, all from various backgrounds. From punk and ska with DIE ÄRZTE and DIE TOTEN HOSEN, FEUERSCHWANZ demonstrate their glorious joy in moulding a bunch of genres from home and away into their own style. The reimagined reggae/ hip-hop Ding originally by SEEEED, for example, takes on an almost nu-metal feel to it, which is both surprising and yet you couldn’t imagine it turning out any other way.

There’s a plethora of appreciation for the whole spectrum of music, not least from RAMMSTEIN, with FEUERSCHWANZ’s own interpretation of Engel a worthy rendition of the industrial classic rebirthed as a stoic folk metal hymn. If you’d prefer this more metal influence overall to your covers, then you’ll be pretty satisfied with the likes of Got Mit Uns a la SABATON, and the bombastic covers of AMON AMARTH’s Twilight Of The Thunder God and GHOST’s Square Hammer.

However, it does feel that FEUERSCHWANZ shine most when they’re really turning what you think you know on its head. If you’re looking for brownie points with a less metal sibling or significant other, or if you’re well-rounded in your various tastes in music, then the more modern pop tunes will be of interest. ED SHEERAN’s Hobbit anthem I See Fire becomes a brooding ballad worthy of Smaug, while THE WEEKND’s Blinding Lights is a pretty good time too. To bookend the record with another world-renowned pop culture classic, EUROPE’s The Final Countdown is absolute bags of daft, chantable fun for all.

What Todsünden shows is that there’s a specific joy in putting on a cover song and waiting to see someone’s eyes light up as they connect with a tune they know, played in a way they’d never imagined. FEUERSCHWANZ have taken an eclectic group of songs that in their original forms would be a bizarre playlist, and streamlined them all into majestic folk metal. It’s joyfully silly, deliriously good fun and a record you should make sure is in every stocking.

Rating: 7/10

Todsünden is set for release on December 30th via Napalm Records

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