Wintersun - 'Time I' Album Review

Again, I’m ashamed to admit, especially in the wake of the release of Time I, Wintersun are a band that passed me by a bit. I’ve always been a bit sceptical of power metal; a lot of power metal bands spend too much time trying to focus on huge solos, fast riffs and ludicrously high-pitched vocals and as a result sound nothing more than cliché. Thankfully, Wintersun have avoided taken the ‘power metal clichés’ cheese-block from the fridge and grating it over their latest album.

 

 

It’s been eight long years since Wintersun released their almighty self-titled debut album. With the obvious and brilliant used links with power metal and melodic death metal, the album was excellent and shot the band to fame amongst the metal community. Wintersun’s Wintersun can easily be heard in their latest album, released on October the 19^th last year.  The album is a conceptual piece focused around the “astonishing, overwhelming” and “staggering” thing that time is. It’s a good job that these three words are synonymous with this album.

The band really hasn’t held back. As soon as ‘When Time Fades Away’ begins, the albums creates this impressive, undoubtedly folky, but boundlessly epic far-eastern feel, as traditional eastern folk instruments are used to create this massive, epic atmosphere. Slowly but surely it builds and eventually ‘Sons Of Winter And Stars’ kicks in, introducing the matured, controlled and overwhelmingly melodic creature that Wintersun has become. Their melodic death metal and power metal influences sit perfectly with the symphonic and folk accompaniments. “Sit” is the wrong word, nothing about this album “sits”. The limitless larger-than-life power metal energy that bounds alongside the flowing, intertwining melodies, riffs and harmonies carry the work through progression after progression as vocals switch from enormous, power-metal influenced cleans, thick with brilliant vibrato, to melodic  death metal growls that excellently bring the vigour of the album up higher and higher each time.

Despite the constant riffs, melodies and solos presented by the tracks, nothing is lost. Every riff can be heard, every solo is clear, every symphonic line is audible. It is presented and mixed masterfully, and absolutely nothing is lost. Everything is so energetic, upbeat and dramatic that you would think there couldn’t possibly be a climactic moment in any of the songs, but Wintersun easily deliver massive choruses with folk-inspired, chanting vocal choruses performed by the band whilst  big solos scream out over the thick texture set down by the orchestral parts.

Time I is amazing. Perhaps sometimes it feels a little slow or maybe the odd transition could be a little better, but these are menial, insignificant farts compared to what the album does achieve. It really is “astonishing, overwhelming” and “staggering” on every level, and never at any one point does it fail to deliver something amazing.

 

      Overall – 9/10

      Best Song: Sons Of Winter And Stars – 9.5/10

Enslaved - 'RIITIIR' Album Review

I’ll be honest. I’ve never really listened to Enslaved before today. I’ve always been aware of the hype that surrounds them from the more mature black metal fans (by mature I mean those who aren’t completely ignorant, racist, socially worthless, backwards, right-wing, elitist pigs who listen to nothing but Burzum and claim all other metal is shit) whenever a tour or a new album is announced, but it’s always sort of passed me by. It wasn’t until earlier this week, when browsing the Play.com sales, I saw their latest album, RIITIIR, and suddenly began think I might be missing out on something.  RIITIIR was waiting for me when I got home today along with Winterson’s Time I (which I’ll try and do a review of if I get the time at the weekend.) The hour-and-a-bit confirmed to me my worst fears: I indeed had been missing out.

 

 

                RIITIIR really is something quite different. Naïvely, I expected something along the lines of Gorgoroth, Satyricon maybe, something more traditional, with simpler black metal progressive elements, but with a more developed and refined sprinkling. Instead Enslaved provide this incredible journey that takes the vicious, brutal black metal from twenty years ago and essentially beats it to pulp with up with massive Mastodon-like riffage and radicalness but keeps it all under close control with progressive power perhaps equitable to giants such as Opeth. Enslaved really have made something quite brilliant.

The best way I can think of describing RIITIIR is as grown-up black metal. Although it still calls back to its violent and aggressive early 90s roots in songs such as ‘Roots Of The Mountain’ and ‘Materal’, the album encompasses a much wider, more touching and engrossing feel. Enslaved’s RIITIIR is wonderfully diverse: one moment the listener is surrounded by epic blast-beats and huge, brutal riffs, and the next moment everything has seamlessly and perfectly mellowed, allowing room and blissful adaption for a sullen clean section where acoustic guitars play out incredible melodies and beautiful, slow ideas before taking off gracefully into a hard-and-fast section with even more intertwining, persisting riffs and big drum lines, but accompanied by an incredible clean vocal line.

                What’s more, there are some really great guitar leads on this album. Never at any point though do Enslaved seem to use a solo for the sake of using a solo like so many bands do; the notes simply drift in and out, up and down with the rest of the song with such skill and finesse that you hardly even notice. It just feels so right.

                The album moves like water, faultlessly adapting and easily moving from one section to another. Tempos, sections and rhythms rise and fall in sophisticated and intelligent waves as the album takes the listener on its journey through everything black metal is, was, and could be. RIITIIR perfectly blends elements of traditional black metal and Enslaved’s own advanced, progressive genius as if the two were always meant to be together, synthesizing black metal’s fury with their musical majesty to create a truly epic album.

            Overall – 9/10

Best Song: Veilburner – 9.5/10