Wintersun - Wintersun (2004)^{Release ID: 3731}

Sigh!

For the first few seconds of the opening track of this album I was struggling to see how this had anything to do with Death Metal.  Having heard only black metal style vocals over poppy guitar work, I am still no nearer if I am honest.  The internet tells me that this is Symphonic Death Metal.  I don't believe everything I read on the internet for a reason.

There's no power behind much of anything on display here and so I am left to hope that some catchy songwriting or sonic wizardry is awaiting me over the coming tracks.  It isn't though!  The tempo and structure suggests that this could be a folk metal album, except they forgot to write any actual folk parts to any of the tracks.  As a result it just sounds like overtly jolly heavy metal with a black metal vocalist who has no friends who like black metal so he's had to join any band he can find.

If I am forcing myself to find any positives and not just look like a miserable bastard then I would say that the lead work is of actual note and clearly the work of an adept guitarist.  The rest of I found a real struggle to get through with no spark or even palatable consistency to cling to I do confess to hitting the skip button more than once in search of something of interest.

The lyrics to track number three Sleeping Stars sum up the experience perfectly for me:

"Suddenly I feel a

warmth go through my body,

but I feel that a

part of me has died."

The "warmth" might have been wind though.

Here, Jari Maenpaa has perfected aspects of multiple metal subgenres (Folk, Black, Power, Melodic Death) and fused them into one totally unique opus. Frigid, majestic soundscapes with a warm, beating heart at the core. Every song is a spine-chilling masterpiece.

The story of Wintersun is a legendary one. After this stunning self-titled debut album, the founder of the band, Jari Mäenpää decided to make an album so epic and complex that it can be considered the "Chinese Democracy" of epic metal in terms of development. And while the first part Time I was released in 2012, it wasn't until this year (2024) that Time II is finally finished and will be released later this year (2024), plus a massive boxset that includes demos for a planned multi-album series. And it shall continue this diverse blend of the power metal of Rhapsody of Fire, the viking metal of Bathory, the melodeath of Children of Bodom, and the folk metal of Equilibrium!

As ambitious as this blend sounds, it doesn't have true originality. I still enjoy this, don't get me wrong, but as I grow older and my music taste matures, the spark from these kinds of bands is long gone from me, and it is a bit overwhelming hearing so many elements in one plate that I once enjoyed 10 years before this review. Despite the lack of coherence, there's still brilliant creativity. The epic narratives and melodeath rage work well in their respective places when they don't clash heavily into each other.

I like how the song lengths ascend from the shortest to the longest throughout the album, starting with the short yet heavily diverse "Beyond the Dark Sun". There's so much going on in just two and a half minutes in contrast to their longer songs lasting more than 5 minutes. The power metal riffing, neoclassical keyboards, epic narration, deathly vocals, and folky atmosphere are all in here! It's so catchy and will get you prepared for this solid journey that would end with a 10-minute epic. Next song "Winter Madness" once again pushes the boundaries of blackened melodeath that shouldn't be any problem with the heavier metalheads.

Taking a break from the aggression is "Sleeping Stars" which has slower beauty. Kicking off "Battle Against Time" is a two-minute blasting intro. The song itself is suitable for an epic winter battle. "Death and the Healing" shines with melancholic guitar melody in an epic ballad, once again showing a different side of the band as opposed to the fast fury of most of the previous songs.

Then we have the progressive multi-part "Starchild". Although I enjoyed this a lot when I was younger, it now suffers the same problem as Star One's "Starchild" epic; a bit annoying and pompous, and the song ends better than it began. Probably the weakest track here, but strong enough to maintain the 4-star rating for this album. "Beautiful Death" has the most of the black metal influences here. The journey finally reaches its climax in the exceptional "Sadness and Hate" with epic majesty in the music and lyrics. This solidifies the album following the perfect metal storm of beginning and ending with the best tracks. And there are more epics like this to come in subsequent albums...

All in all, there's so much ambitious creativity in this album, but this epicness I don't enjoy as much as I did when I was a young teen due to how overwhelming I find some passages nowadays. As catchy as some songs can be, they could've been better structured. I just hope the time spent on completing the Time series will all be worth it. I'm sure anyone who enjoys the epic power/melodeath/folk metal of Alestorm, Battlelore, and Eluveitie will dig this as much as I did in the past but much more than I do now....

Favorites: "Beyond the Dark Sun", "Battle Against Time", "Death and the Healing", "Sadness and Hate"