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Sep
04
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Who are you, and what have you done with Vintersorg?

Is it just me, or has Vintersorg been getting lamer with every album release?

Ödemarkens SonFirst of all, Till Fjälls and Ödemarkens Son were both amazing albums. Strong melodies, a powerfully deep voice, heavy and fast drums, and noticable folk-influence all made for a great sound - despite (and at times even because of) the growling - perfectly exemplified in songs like När Alver Sina Runor Sjungit and Fångad Utav Nordens Själ. Even the mellow instrumental Trollbunden was a masterpiece.

Cosmic GenesisThen comes Cosmic Genesis. Oh dear, he’s singing in English. The folk influence and Swedish language are suddenly gone, but despite the esoteric ramblings of songs like Astral And Arcane and A Dialogue With The Stars, it still has strong melodic tracks like Rainbow Demon and The Enigmatic Spirit. It’s not as great or unique as his first few albums, but I could live with the new Vintersorg.

Visions From The Spiral GeneratorAnd as if Cosmic Genesis wasn’t a lofty enough title, his next album is titled Visions from The Spiral Generator. Though it opens strongly with the brief-but-catchy Quotation, the entire rest of the album is basically more of the esoteric rambling of Cosmic Genesis. And worse, the generally octave-higher melodies seem to have been tacked on as an afterthought, and the growling is a lot more dense. Lyrics like “I intersect the shining pulsator/When I travel in this spirit simulator/Receiving visions from the generator/E.S.P. Mirage” - they don’t mean anything. I could write a new Vintersorg song by jumping around randomly on the melodic scale singing from a thesaurus and interspersing it with sections of mucosal growling. Besides Quotation, A Star-Guarded Coronation is really the only worthwhile track on the album.

The Focusing BlurAnd The Focusing Blur. This album was so bad it made me want to puke. Everything that was bad about VftSG was worse here. A Matrix Odyssey, for example, has to be the lamest track I’ve ever heard. “With whom shall I have this dialogue? The mad, the noble, the wit?…”. The voice that section is spoken in sounds like deliberate silliness, except I know it’s not. And that makes it painful to listen to.

Vintersorg says his next album (due soon, though I don’t know when), Solens Rötter (The Sun’s Origin), will be written entirely in Swedish again, with more folk influence. Then again, he also says it will “still be forward thinking”, and will certainly not be another Till Fjälls or Ödemarkens Son. I’m tentatively hopeful for it, but we’ll see.







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