The Rock Blogger

Vinterland. Welcome My Last Chapter . 1996. 4.5 stars .

While I have been tempted to focus on more current and popular bands on this blog, there are just too many criminally underrated acts out there to leave unnoticed, and Sweden’s ferocious Vinterland is just one of them. Despite being the band’s sole album, Welcome My Last Chapter is a highly refined and melodic work of black metal, overcoming its relative obscurity to rank as one of the genre’s most effective releases.

Nearly all the hallmarks of Scandinavian black metal can be found here, including winter themes, sorrowful lyrics, forest imagery and brutal blast beats. The crucial difference that breaks Vinterland from the mold is the symphonic production that allows the majestic keyboards and serpentine riffs to ring through with brutal clarity. Rather than tapping into the lo-fi, crusty aesthetics that populate so many black metal albums, Vinterland give their songs more breathing room, providing space between their icy guitar riffs, mournful piano breaks and relentless drum rolls so you can make out the crystalline melodies as they unfold.

The variety of sounds here make the album consistently interesting, as the compositions weave between vicious metal assaults and expansive crescendos, allowing each musical element to sound distinct and epic. Rather than washing their songs down with terrifying white noise, Vinterland plot their course carefully, giving prevalence to coherent song structures. Welcome My Last Chapter , while still dark and frozen, manages to break from raw black metal traditionalism to shape a beautiful and engaging experience.

Here is “Im an Other in the Night”

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 9:25 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.