SOLENS RÖTTER

From their days of Swedish Folk Metal, Vintersorg has come full circle with this release. Well sort of. This album is a throw back to early days of Folk Metal, (including going back to writing in all Swedish) however it also uses their progressive elements from their newer work. This a good album, and very unique.

It may seem crazy to think an album could use elements of Black Metal, progressive rock, folk music and avant-garde but we are prog fans! We should know anything is possible. Indeed, this album uses it all. Beautiful acoustic guitar melodies, heavy riffs, clean vocals, growls (sometimes the two at the same time!) tremolo picking and blast beats, fairly complex drums beats and guitar riffs, keyboard, and folk instruments. Often all of these are used in the course of a single song!

While this could be considered a "Folk Metal" album I think that is silly and pointless. There are so many sub-genres out there and often they have major overlap, (and some are not even really different!) I guess it could be called "Extreme Prog" maybe do it's sometimes harsh vocals but really, I like to keep things simple and I am 100% confident in calling this album Prog-Metal.

This is a really good album and some stand out songs are "Perfektionisten", "Spirar Och Gror", and "Att Bygga En Ruin". While all of the songs are good, and the ones mentioned above are real gems, some songs are just not really that great.

I think this is a great album for ANY fan of prog-metal and I do think more open minded prog fans can really enjoy this album. It is truly progressive and compared to some other bands, it is really not that brutal or extreme. Great for prog metal fans and more open minded proggers in general.

Four Stars