better than the original artwork.
A new Wintersun album, band that started legendary and then fell into the dark slumber. Will this album be able to get them back to Melodic death metal world? Or just kill the whole thing before Time II will be finished?
Shitty, plastic artwork and the fact that unlike Time II we didn't hear about this album being made until late this year are worrying, it looks like something Jari did in his free time in his basement that they have to sell to Nuclear Blast so NB won't kick their asses out. But open-minded and with tiny bit of hope I sit down with best quality master wav files and good headphones, let's take a look.
Awaken From The Dark Slumber
It starts with some atmospherical intro with candy-like Time 1 soft orchestrations
then drums hit it along with some really crappy black metal guitars with various synths in the background. It stays for a long time, too long for me and I like to watch or listen to some 10 hour version videos so it says a lot.
Vocals hit it with decent power and spelling, Jari got even better than on Time 1.
The background for vocals is much richer with guitars.
Considering how long and boring this song it's definitely black metal done wrong.
IT'S SO FUCKING BORING.
After a while it sounds like the background on equilibrium live shows with bad audio setting: plastic, loud and out of place.
And now more distorted black metal guitar, great.
And now a long, boring part where nothing interesting happens.
WHY SO LONG, WHY SO BORING? Were You ever bored on the first album?
Or Time 1? Yes Jari, play live a song where part 1 and 2 of the song are divided by boring instrumental part that last hours.
At least the vocals are good.
Overall not much happens, the guitars and drums are boring, Jari tries to tell the story and add some typical live sing along stuff and it doesn't really work, they come around 9th minute and the audience should already be asleep at this point.
Some of it reminds me of Winter's Gate, so if You somehow like this track please check out last Insomnium's album if You havent.
The song is Starchild with less fancy build, add the boring, stretched parts of Beautiful Death to it and copy paste instrumental parts to fill 12 minutes with it.
The vocals are great, lyrics are some pointless crap like on Sons of Winter and Stars, but there are no fancy drums or guitars or bass. It's all closer to black metal than ever before which I guess justifies why this music is so fucking long, boring and nothing memorable happens. The melody's pretty dull too.
The Forest That Weeps
"I am the worms in the dirt"
...You mean Wintersun fans?Intro slightly more interesting than in the previous song but also stretched to the point of yawning.
Guitars still sound like black metal rhythm guitar with broken amplifier and a few strings missing
And vocals fail to appear in over 2 minutes.
After a verse of again good vocals the "epic riff" happens and still sounds fucking dull, just as on the video. Thankfully the choirs with Jari that follow are pretty good.
Lyrics are also a bit more interesting than before, maybe because the whole music has a much better melody than the previous track.
I wonder if Kai didn't asleep when recording drums, this sounds really boring. Maybe playing in Nightwish helps to cope with boring drum parts.
Uh oh, I thought that the song ended and it's around half. Boring instrumental part time!
At least after some repeating of some melody the guitars hit it hard and finally doesn't sound like shit.
But no solo happens, fuck solos. It's only Jari Maenpaa, one of previously best guitarists I knew.
And now you made me hate that guitars joined the instrumental part, because it's wide, it's stretched, it got boring after 30 seconds.
Some turisas-ish outro joins with badly mixed volume (way too loud than the rest) and good choirs that follow.
Why does it have to be that long? Sons of Winter and Stars were long, but they were packed with lyrics, memorable moments, walls of sound. This just doesn't work, the song is as long but has around 2 times less lyrics so it has to either repeat some parts to the point where the listener is bored or stretch out every element adding some extra seconds to parts that start good and interesting, but then get fucking boring.
Unlike the previous song this one has some more redeeming parts, it could be a good song if it was max 8 minutes long..
I bet there is nothing to discover here after multiple listens, on the first listen You can see the whole image and structure.
Eternal Darkness
Another stretched intro, this time less interesting with even more obnoxious black metal guitar
(amps on fire, amps on fire, hurting ears with desire!)
I think Jukka is snoring or burping on the intro, not surprising
Enter the washing machine drums, later lyrics and some sounds in the background that are barely audible.
Remember when we all said that Time 1 needs more solos? Jari didn't, there are no solos so far and close to no riffs.
BORING AND STRETCHED, BORING AND STRETCHED. I'M DONE
Vocals: 10/10
Guitars: 2/10
Bass: -1/10
Drums: 2/10
Additional score:
+ Choirs and vocal mixing is good
- style shift to boring as fuck black metal
- I didn't pay for it and I feel robbed, mostly of time
= I had low expectations from a rushed album like that but it's worse than I thought. I thought
a perfectionist like Jari wouldn't release something that fucking boring.
Wanna do atmospherical metal? Check out Swallow The Sun. Check out Insomnium. Wanna add some good black metal stuff to melodic death? Check out Whispered.
- overhyped beyond reason by both the band and the fans.
Total score: 25%. I wasn't able to finish listening it, I was bored beyond reason. Wintersun can always make me feel something new and unexpected and they didn't fail. It was the first time I got so bored while listening to something Jari made.
This review was crap, but You know what? Listening to low quality music doesn't make me wanna try hard and be a good reviewer.
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