Alda is a atmospheric, folk-inspired, metal band of my favorite category, Cascadian black metal!
They have a shredding female bassist. I feel like their self titled album released in 2009 got an undue amount of shit talked on it, and weather you agree with that or not you should definitely check out Tahoma, their most recent release (January 2011). The growth of the band is apparent and the recording sounds really good and clean with just a little grit. You're looking at the typical Cascadian black metal fare of longer songs with intense melodies, guttural vocals and primal drumming? Wait what? The tribal drumming moments in songs like Tearing of the Weave, at first were a little bit of a turn off for me but if you hang in there its going somewhere and only builds up the momentum of the music more. They also employ a lot of acoustic guitar in the building up of songs. Alda maybe isn't anything you haven't heard before if you're into CBM but its well produced, and is a grade A example of ecologically minded metal that you could imagine being played at the top of a mountain or in a temperate rainforest. All in all a really excellent, surprisingly fluid album.
Also, how fucking sick is that album cover?
