Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Winterfylleth - The Threnody of Triumph (2012)

I have listened to a lot of black metal in my time. During my forty-five years of existence on this planet the genre has been born and been split into sub-genres, diverged into more modern and accessible formats even and yet still a core of authentic, conventional and “troo” black metal bands persist in creating the more traditional elements at the front and centre of what they do. In doing so the genre has moved beyond simply taking a core sound and adding a mix of say death metal to proceedings and we have bands such as Winterfylleth who do not give us much of anything we have not heard before and seem to get by on representing an attachment to a different historical and cultural past to the glut of Norwegian, Swedish and French bands within the genre who have applied the music to their iterations of stories, myths and legends that have gone before them.

As such, Winterfylleth offer nothing new to the black metal scene beyond their detail of “Britishness” (in inverted commas because I personally find it a ridiculous concept). Now, before this starts to read like a review that is about to go off on a slur against Manchester’s finest black metal bastards, I will go on record as saying I like the majority of what I hear on The Threnody of Triumph. In terms of the wider discography, I have only heard The Harrowing of Heirdom and feel it is one of the real highlights of acoustic folk music in the past ten years, so my experience of their black metal albums is limited right now to this record. I have no lyric sheet (nor would I read it regardless) but I do not feel this is band who wish to celebrate their homeland with any sense of nationalist pride (none of the high-stepping, arm raised just above shoulder height nonsense). At its core, The Threnody of Triumph sounds heartfelt, well-written and conscientiously performed.

The problem I have is that it blurs into one long, melodic and racing black metal record broken up only by the occasional acoustic interlude (now I see where The Harrowing of Heirdom took shape from at least). I am searching for nuances in the sound; a climbing bass line, a break from the excessive tremolo-picking or a sense that tempo has at least the opportunity for variety. Instead, for most of the album there is just blasting, melodic black metal with the occasional baritone, clean vocal to offer the only sense of slippage from a very dominant theme. Again, whilst there is nothing wrong with this it just sounds incredibly tiresome over ten tracks (interludes aside of course).

A hint of atmosphere would not go amiss here guys, even to frame the melodic elements better in the grander scheme of things and lose some of the overly positive vibes from the sound. In isolation, individual tracks work well, but taken as a whole album it just sounds stifling and uncreative and I am bm fan who loves a straight up no fucking thrills blastfest but this album seems to be touting something more and yet it seems to want to follow a very basic blueprint to get there.