adg211288 There is a quality about Philosophy of Winter that is oddly hypnotic. Although it is black metal, albeit with an ambient twist to it, the music produced here just makes me what to close my eyes and enjoy it. In fact it’s so hypnotic that I can easily fall asleep to it, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s a album I can relax to, something that I never thought to say of a black metal record.

Frontman Winter provides a strong performance in not only his vocals, which are near faultless for a release of this nature. He’s not the most understandable growler, in fact it’s easier to hear the lyrics on some songs over some others. For example on opener Bringer of Storm he’s not as clear as on its follow-up, Spirits of the Winds.

The guitar sound on this album is amazing, backed up with the ambience of Winter’s keyboards. You’re not going to get blistering guitar solos, thrashy riffs or fast tempos, but instead a mid-paced, dark masterpiece, which was when I originally heard this album unlike anything else I’d heard from the black metal genre, though admittedly I was not that well versed in it at the time and Forest Silence were one of the first black metal bands I ever bought an album by. On top of the musical brilliance the production is of a good quality, something that many black metal records seem to lack on purpose. I can safely say that Philosophy of Winter plugged a gap in my metal collection that I didn’t even know was there.

Highlights of the album are Spirits of the Winds and At the Dawning of Chaos. There is not a bad track here, but these two stand out over the three others on the CD. The song writing formula doesn’t vary often, with long tracks not clocking in at under the six minute mark throughout, but when that formula produces an album this good, it doesn’t matter. I highly recommend this.

(Review originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)