Well, I was eagerly waiting for this one. Finsterforst have been plugging away in the underground for like a decade now, but it wasn't until 2012's Rastlos that they blew me away with a powerful album of first-rate epic metal. This band has been accused of apeing Moonsorrow - and on this album that would be an even more valid criticism - but they have gotten to where they do it so well there is not much to complain about.
If there is a complaint to be leveled at Mac Dich Frei, it's that this is very much Rastlos over again. Nearly every second of this disc is filled with music, and despite that this is actually a bit shorter than Rastlos, it feels longer. That would probably be a bot of a sign that this album is not quite as good as the one that came before it, and it really is not quite. This is more of the Black/Pagan ownage we loved on the last disc - huge songs, epic arrangements, the mix of folk and metal elements, the well-done clean singing - all of it is here, and it all sounds good, but it just does not gel quite as well this time around, and the album drags. I don't want it to, but it does.
So if you loved Rastlos as much as I did, or you like Moonsorrow and want something that sounds a lot like them, then this will hit the spot, but despite a lot of effort, it does not manage to equal the album that came before it.
