Conor Fynes 'The Focusing Blur' - Vintersorg (6/10)

It's usually very interesting to hear a reinvention of a genre, whether its taking the existing sound of the genre in a new direction, or using abnormal means to make the same point. Vintersorg are one such band that have done alot for their style, that being the sort of music most often called 'viking metal'. This genre typically revolves around a narrow band of topics, ranging from Viking mythology, to Viking culture, and giants. Although I have boundless respect for some of the best viking acts- Bathory and Enslaved come to mind- most bands are copycats that try to revive both the glory of their war-torn ancestors, and the artists that made it such a popular trend in metal to begin with. This is largely why Vintersorg stand out, why they have all of the qualities of viking metal, they are not afraid to experiment with trying new things. As promising as that sounds, this has led to a rather uneven career, and their fifth album 'The Focusing Blur' is right evidence of this. Despite having plenty of potential for brilliance, Vintersorg's ambition leads them to create something that feels more scattered than anything, leaving me to wonder what this could have sounded like if things were a little less, err... blurry.

In the style of many viking metal bands, Vintersorg use very clean vocals over the sort of instrumentation that someone might first associate with black metal. There are extreme vocals here, but they are used very sparsely. The vocal duties instead aim for either melodic singing, or theatrical spoken-word dialogue. The singing of Andreas Hedlund is probably the best thing that Vintersorg offers here; as usual, his voice is very strong, and offers the listener plenty of incredibly melodic choruses around every corner. Although incredibly harmonious and well arranged, few of the melodies are all-too memorable, although I will admit that some of the lines here can get pretty catchy after a few listens. As for the spoken- word pieces that are so prevalent on this album, Hedlund warbles on as if he was some philosophically-inclined ringleader, and it does not work quite as well as Vintersorg thinks it does. Usually, these parts pass by as being too heavy on the cheese and even pretentious, especially considering that there are song titles here like 'A Microscopical Macrocosm'. The lyrical content is probably more interesting than typical runes-and-giants fare, but this could have been done so much better.

The keyboards fill in for the folky elements here, and while they might attempt to sound like classical string sections and medieval instruments, but the synths are far too shallow to stand as a valid replacement. The way these folky sections are played sounds very thin, made more of a shame by the fact that the composition itself is very good. 'The Focusing Blur' does not enjoy the same memorable songwriting, but there are parts here where Vintersorg is showing their adventurous spirit, and it's ironically usually shown through the cheesy keyboards. Through the fairly typical melodies, drums and guitar parts, it usually comes as a big surprise to hear them drop a prog rock keyboard solo in the middle of a song. There are even moments- particularly an eerie moment that felt almost plucked out of a circus show- that nearly verge on the avant-garde.

What I envision most for Vintersorg here are two guys with a bunch of musical ideas, throwing them all down in a row, and calling it an album. Admittedly, some of the stuff here is brilliant, but I cannot call 'The Focusing Blur' an excellent album for the fact that for every idea that does work here, there is another that does not fare nearly as well. Put simply, 'The Focusing Blur' needed more focus. Less forward-thinking albums by this band have had a greater impact on me, simply because there was a clearer sense of flow to them.

adg211288 Jordpuls (which means “Pulse of the Earth”) is the seventh full-length album by Swedish band Vintersorg, released in 2011. Vintersorg’s music has covered several styles of metal, being mostly rooted in the extremer side of the genre and with Jordpuls we’re presented with pretty much a progressive metal affair with folk influences. Some of the riffs take on a black metal edge as well.

Like with the previous Vintersorg release Solens rötter the lyrics of Jordpuls are all in the band’s native Swedish. Band frontman Andreas Hedlund (who also uses the stage name of Vintersorg although the actual band is in fact two members) delivers these lyrics with a mix of growled vocals and soaring cleans. Both are pretty fitting to the style of metal on offer on Jordpuls. Hedlund is clearly a talented musician not just as a vocalist, and he handles much of Jordpuls by himself with only the aid of guitarist Mattias Marklund. Vocally he shines but then I never heard the man (who is also involved with many other projects including Borknagar, Cronian and Otyg) deliver a bad performance on that front. But despite a strong vocal, overall I don’t find a lot to write home about with Vintersorg’s 2011 offering.

The problem isn’t that Jordpuls is a bad album, because it certainly isn’t. The problem is that Jordpuls isn’t a good album either. It’s certainly listenable music, but upon its conclusion I’m just left with entirely neutral feelings. It took until the album’s sixth track, Skogen Sover, for me to sit up and really pay attention to it. I did actually enjoy this song a fair bit. It has a somewhat chaotic atmosphere to parts of it which I liked a lot, and the folk inspired sections also worked pretty well within the general progressive structure. But everything that came before and after it just passed me by without striking me as noteworthy with the exception of closing ballad Eld Och Lågor, which was actually a very enjoyable acoustic affair.

There are certainly good ideas in the music, but in general they seem stretched a bit too thinly over the album’s duration. It isn’t an overly long either, lasting about forty-seven minutes, making this an even bigger problem. I also dislike the fact that for something with folk elements the album sounds very fake and manufactured when it comes to thgem, being mostly acoustic guitar or keyboard driven folk melodies as opposed to actual folk instrumentation. Given that Jordpuls is firstmost and foremost a progressive metal album and not full blown folk metal such a thing would have been easier to overlook and could have been put down as using folk melodies rather than trying to actually be folk metal, had those compositions been up to scratch, plus also taking into account that that manufactured feel to the album stretches over into the metal side of things with the use of programmed drums, although to be fair this isn’t noticeable. With the lack of quality songs the falseness of the folk parts stands out all too well and makes Jordpuls seem a very much uninspired affair.

The inclusion of two tracks that stood out as decent, Skogen Sover and Eld Och Lågor, save Jordpuls from total mediocrity but in general the album just leaves me with neither good or bad feelings and is deserving of a score to demonstrate as such. The two good tracks coax a small portion of additional score from me, but not to the point where I’d really consider this album leaving the middle of the road territory to make it into the above average zone. It’s the sort of music that if on I wouldn’t necessarily turn it off, but I wouldn’t be the one pressing play. I guess prior fans of Vintersorg may enjoy this album more than I did, but to me for the most part it sounds fake and directionless and a bitter disappointment to listen to.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scoring 5.4/10)

Conor Fynes 'Jordpuls' - Vintersorg (5/10)

Although beginning as a fairly black/folk metal oriented project, Norwegian duo Vintersorg has since tread quite far from the label, instead more recently being quite a bit more melodic and mellow in their music. The seventh album 'Jordpuls' was described to me as an album that takes the band further back to their roots, but still greatly evident is the strong presence of clean vocal harmonies. After a brilliant impression with the previous Vintersorg output 'Solens Rotter', I was quite intrigued to hear what these guys would have to offer now. 'Jordpuls' greatly disappoints me in the sense that it feels like it is a step backwards in virtually every respect for the band, despite the fact that Vintersorg has still maintained some of their strengths here.

There isn't too much of an evident development in Vintersorg's sound on 'Jordpuls'; rather a regression in the pejorative sense. The songwriting feels somewhat dumbed down from the dynamic, melodic and powerful presentation given on the prior album, but 'Jordpuls' does generally pull through. There are still some of the same great black metal guitar riffage here in parts, but the highlight of the sound remains frontman Andreas Hedlund's beautiful clean vocal harmonies, which had me fall in love with 'Solens Rotter' originally, and now do make up an even greater proportion of what there is to like about this album. Despite the shortcomings concerning how memorable the melodies here may actually be, Hedlund still stands strong as being a master of harmony.

Possibly the most disappointing element of 'Jordpuls' is the folk instrumentation, or- in this album's case- programming. From the very beginning, I was immediately put off by the cheap, fake sounds that seemed as if they were trying to emulate such instruments as the violin. Although I am generally appreciative of the fact that many bands do not have the resources to have all of the instruments they would like on their album, there does not feel as if there is an excuse for Vintersorg in this case; albums in the past have heard the folk element sound much less contrived and fake. If this has been an artistic decision on the band's part, it sadly does not work to their benefit, and tends to have me think that this may have been a step backward for the band. On the other hand, the drum machine here is done fairly well; sounding often as if there is a real session drummer behind the kit.

I cannot wholeheartedly recommend 'Jordpuls' as a listen, due to the fact that Vintersorg has disappointed the fan in me with this one. Although it scarcely compares to the last couple of albums they have released, 'Jordpuls' does retain some of the things that had me love the project to begin with, so I'm not left entirely discouraged.

Conor Fynes 'Solens Rötter' - Vintersorg (8/10)

In what can be described as a 'return to their roots,' Vintersorg has arguably created their most consistent album to date. Moving away from the avant-garde leanings of the previous two albums and making a return to the viking folk metal sound the band was founded on, there is still a level of progressive ambition retained that should appease those that found themselves moreso drawn to the stranger-sounding, more recent material. Despite their potential labelling as 'black metal,' 'Solens Rötter' is a deeply melodic journey, and seeks to break Vintersorg out of the genre almost entirely.

The album's strength relies greatly on the strong clean singing abilities of Andreas Hedlund. While there are the typical black metal growls here as well, much of the songwriting is centered around the immense vocal harmonies the man can produce. Meaning 'roots of the sun' in Swedish, 'Solens Rötter' is also the first album in almost a decade that Vintersorg writes completely in their mother tongue. While this may rob the average english-speaking listener of the firsthand abililty to delve into the subject matter being sung at hand, the language is phonetically very well suited for the music, and gives the album an even more Scandanavian vibe to it.

The generally optimistic (yet beautiful) clean singing and polished production gives the music a light feeling overall, despite obvious attempts in places to be 'dark.' As has been said before, Vintersorg gets back in touch with the concept of 'folk metal' here, and the typical metal instruments are mixed in with much more traditional sounds; giving 'Solens Rötter' a very medieval feeling to it. While there is certainly progressiveness to the music here (comparisons to prog death giants Opeth is not unfounded), many of the songs here are generally straightforward in their structure, although each track is very strong. The album certainly opens with one of it's strongest pieces however; 'Döpt I En Jökelsjö.' Through an array of acoustic guitars, black metal growls, rapid fury and finally the great harmonized clean vocal work, the opener is a perfect crash course in everything that a listener can expect from 'Solens Rötter.'

The album's sense of flow isn't particularly great and the sound is generally quite uniform throughout, but 'Solens Rötter' is an immense journey. Anyone under the impression that metal lacks melody as a genre, should certainly check out this great album from Vintersorg, and possibly reconsider their opinions.

Conor Fynes 'Cosmic Genesis' - Vintersorg (7/10)

In progressive music circles, the genre of black metal seems to get a treatment as if it were the plague. Even many metalheads themselves can't bring themselves to develop a taste for it, although diehard fans of the genre swear it is one of the most atmospheric and emotive styles of music in existence to date. With Vintersorg's 'Cosmic Genesis,' it appears as if there is a perfect album for those who aren't into black metal (or other extreme forms) but are interested to look into it. Strong melodies and intelligent instrumentation mixed with some more primal, heavy sounding riffs makes for a very well rounded metal album that a much wider variety of listeners should find appreciation for.

One of the biggest points of contension people seem to have with black metal are the high pitched screams which dominate and help define the genre. While these are indeed present in 'Cosmic Genesis,' the main form of vocal delivery rests on the deep and strong clean singing of Andreas Hedlund, at times verging on being operatic in nature.

Strong melodies and some rocking guitar riffs are the order of the day for over half of the album. The second half of the album has some golden moments, but it doesn't seem to quite measure up to the high level of consistency and quality that was blessed upon the first four tracks. The only track here that could have been left off is the cover of the Uriah Heep track 'Rainbow Demon,' which while performed admirably (and having a very good medieval- sounding intro,) is weak from it's irritating chorus. 'Naturens Galleri' is another track that doesn't match up to the stronger tracks, but it has some interesting folk segments that I wish the band would have elaborated on, on 'Cosmic Genesis.'

The album is full of great black/folk metal tracks, although the highlights would undeniably include the opener ('Astral & Arcane,') the title track, and the powerful ballad 'The Enigmatic Spirit,' which incidentally convinced me to check out this album after hearing it. While I think the highly melodic nature of this album will help at least a few people open up to black metal as a whole, an established listener to extreme metal might find this a little tame.