Album Review: Wintersun - "Time I"

After reviewing the highly anticipated Pig Destroyer album Book Burner, which took five years after their last album to hit the shelves, I'm going to review another long-awaited album that has finally came out. Y'know how PxDx took five years to release Book Burner? Well Finnish melodic death metal band Wintersun took eight years to release the appropriately titled Time I. Not even all of it, either. Time II is slated to be released next year, so hopefully we'll have it by 2020. Yeah. Eight fucking years. And it's finally (half) here.

And holy balls, was it worth the wait.

Wintersun are a Finnish melodeath band that formed after vocalist and guitarist Jari left folk/ melodic death metal giants Ensiferum in 2004. In that same year he put together the first self-titled Wintersun album, which was received with much praise from critics and fans alike. Wintersun essentially operated as a modded version of Ensiferum, dropping a little of the folky sounds and pumping up the aggression and speed.

Eight years later and we have the first taste of what a new, evolved Wintersun sounds like. What kind of evolution was it? Well, it's like seeing your Charmander evolve right into a motherfucking Charizard. Yeah, it doesn't make a lick of sense, but who cares, because it's fucking awesome. If 2004's Wintersun was a spear to the chest, Time I is a +10 frost enchanted adamantium katana to the throat.

If the artwork and title font don't give it away, Time I musically seems to live in a majestic, snowy, Oriental winter fantasy land. It's kind of like if there was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2: I Wish You a Blood Red Christmas. Time is crammed full of massive sounds, from thick, distorted guitars, to massive orchestral arrangements, to giant choirs, to throat shredding screams and growls and more. The intro track "When Time Fades Away" wears it's Japanese influences on it's sleeve. The giant orchestra and pounding drums play with Eastern melodies and rhythms, which build up and build up like the score out of a martial arts movie.

One vast improvement between Wintersun and Time I are Jari's vocals. There are a bunch of vocal styles that crop up on the album ranging from Jari's death metal growls, Jari's clean vocals, and a choir consisting of members of the folk metal bands Turisas, Tyr, Kiuas, and Jari's former bandmates in Ensiferum. Jari's guttural vocals have gotten much deeper and fuller sounding on Time I, and his clean vocals have taken on an almost Devin Townsend-ish tone, pumping out massive sweeping operatic lines.

The music the band plays is great, as expected, but the focus on the album is more on the band's ability to blend classic metal instrumentation with orchestral arrangements rather than the band's technical ability. Riffs as powerful and catchy as the classic intro riff in Wintersun's "Beyond the Dark Sun" don't crop up often on Time I, which is a little disappointing considering Jari's well-proven riff writing abilities (See Ensiferum's Iron). The symphonic compositions all sound great, with enough rhythms, melodies, and counter-melodies to keep you busy while you dissect the layers upon layers of music thrown at you. The only gripe I have with the orchestral sounds are that they are synthetic, with the instruments' sounds clearly emulated by a computer or keyboard. That being said, they don't sound bad, I just believe the album would have sounded much better with the addition of a live orchestra.

Bomb-Ass Tracks: When Time Fades Away, Sons of Winter and Stars

On a Playlist With: Ensiferum, The Okami Original Soundtrack, Devin Townsend

Overall Score

4.0

So 8 years after Wintersun dropped, Jari and the Wintersun crew have definitely shown a lot of positive growth with the music they make.If you're a fan of Ensiferum or large scale cinematic scores (especially those with an Eastern flare), Time I has something to offer you. Time II is scheduled to be released in 2013, and I can only hope it lives up to it's predecessor in quality.

That's all for now, folks! Now we only need to wait for the new Necrophagist album (I heard it was coming out December 2056).

-DG

Album Review: Carach Angren - "Where the Corpses Sink Forever"

Let me start by saying that I like musicals. Repo! The Genetic Opera, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog, The Lord of the Rings Musical, and most definitely the musical episode of The Legend of Neil are all musicals that have blown my mind and have my fandom forever. Hailing from the Netherlands comes the symphonic black metal trio Carach Angren (translates to “Iron Jaw” in Tolkein’s Elvish language. Awesome.) with Black Metal: The Musical!

       

Its real name, Where the Corpses Sink Forever (WtCSF) is like, a gazillion times cooler/ more brutal than Black Metal: The Musical, but essentially it’s a musical or opera written in a symphonic/ orchestral black metal style. Yeah. Fuckin’ A. Coming with the musical label, obviously WtCSF is a concept album. Now even after a couple listens I’m somewhat shaky on the details of the story, from what I do know, it’s probably like, one of the most brutal and twisted concept albums I’ve listened to, ever. As per usual, I’m going to keep the plot pretty under wraps.

It’s a little difficult to conceptualize something that only consists of audio to be a musical. Normally musicals are something visual (like a movie or theatre production) and the music accompanies it. The main reason WtCSF feels like a musical is the vocal delivery and lyrics. The lyrics are laid out more so in paragraphs than in stanzas, but each line delivered usually rhymes with another. I’m doing a terrible job describing it, but you can just listen to “Lingering in an Imprint Haunting” on the official Carach Angren YouTube channel here and hear what I mean first hand.

The instrumentation on WtCSF is beautiful too. The guitars turn on a dime from ripping away with shredding riffs to beautiful arpeggiated passages. The drums pretty much follow the guitars throughout the whole album. While nothing new or innovative is being done on the drums here, they always seem to accent the music perfectly. Lead vocalist Seregor’s screams blow your ears off with their venomous delivery. One thing that I really enjoy about his vocal style is that he sticks around the mid-range black metal vocals, and even ventures into death metal-esque guttural vocals. To top it all off, massive orchestral arrangements soar over top of everything else. Even though the symphonic bits are synthetic, it truly does feel like a real orchestra playing with the band.

Production really helps this album. Everything’s got so much low end, which adds to the dark and twisted atmosphere the album already conveys. All the instruments are pretty well mixed as well, with the only exception being the snare drum at certain times. For some reason, whenever there are blast beats, the snare seems to drop in volume significantly. It’s still audible, but I feel that it takes away from the chaotic effect of the blast.

Bomb-Ass Tracks

Lingering in an Imprint Haunting: From the first string section, building up to the explosion of metal when Seregor screams “Kill!” all the way until the song’s final choir chant and beautiful guitar passages, this song blows your brains out the whole way through.

The Funerary Dirge of a Violinist: Clocking in at just over eight minutes, the longest song on the album is also the most epic in scope. The song writing here is top notch. Twisting and turning through different tempos and rhythms seamlessly, “Funerary Dirge” is probably my favorite song on the album.

These Fields are Lurking: The closer to the album just sends shivers down my spine. When I went through this album, I was reading the lyrics all the way through, and by the end of this song I was just slack-jawed.

On a Playlist With: Ne Obliviscaris, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Dimmu Borgir

Overall Score

4.5

Where the Corpses Sink Forever is a dark and twisted story shot through the thematic lens of black metal. Fans of black metal, symphonic metal and progressive metal can all find something to enjoy on this album. It’s something disgustingly beautiful.