Drenaï is a French folk metal band from Normandy founded during summer 2011. Their line-up grew steadily, up to seven members in spring 2013. The project is a tribute to the fictional work of the british author David Gemmell. So, their lyrics deals with classic Heroic Fantasy themes such as honor, quest, willpower, freedom...
“Deathwalker” is the natural continuation of their demo. Their music is combining Celtic folk metal and acoustic folk with epic melodic metal, death metal elements and symphonic influences. Once again it’s their epic keyboards and Irish flutes that have the leading role in their melodies, with the help of many other traditional instruments, like bodhrán, accordion, banjo, Celtic harp, viol and oboe... Their guitars are clearly improved, with a much richer, more melodic, variable and technical sound. Apart from the rawer rhythmic riffs, there are also melodic lead guitars and acoustic folk guitars, creating a much more balanced sound. Drenaï experiment a lot with their vocals, singing in so many different styles and luckily for us they are good in all of them. The lead vocals are death metal growls and they are accompanied by wonderful epic choirs, clean male vocals, enchanting female vocals and several cinematic narrations. Their music is much more versatile, lyrical and passionate compared to the demo, with various changes in style between the songs. Many acoustic instrumental and epic soundtrack-like passages enrich their atmospheric compositions, revealing their quite ambitious intentions. There are 10 songs in the album plus a bonus track taken from the demo, with a total duration of almost 55 minutes. The band seems very capable of composing beautiful, epic and melodic music, but in my opinion they still need work to perfect their sound and especially their metal orchestrations. All their epic fantasy related lyrics are in English and can be found in the CD booklet.
Undoubtedly “Deathwalker” is a very good debut album, recommended to fans of melodic epic folk death metal. The album is self-released, with a 12-page booklet illustrated by Martial B. (taken von metalsoundscapes.com)