TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION
Winter are legendary in the world of slow and heavy music. I had the pleasure to catch them live at one of the early 2010’s era Roadburn festivals (I forget which), so it was nice to return to these guys after so many years of not listening to them. Into Darkness is a slow, dirgy romp through well crafted metal tunage. Sometimes you gotta go back to the classics for that decent hit of metallic goodness.
Another one that has been on the to-do list for about six years. I can’t even remember where I picked this one up, maybe some sort of Vice end of year list? I forget. Either way, there is a lot of interesting instrumentation and electronic work here, but those are dragged down by a vocal performance which is interesting at its best and fucking irritating at its worst. Not for me.
The first half of Zeit is somewhat disappointing. There appears to be a prevalence of some sort of bending organ sound or even a theremin, and whilst that is cool for about 2 minute, its irritating after 15 or 20 minutes. Zeit however starts to form into another beast all of its own around the 40 minute mark, where bubbling samples evolve into pulsing electronic sounds and are augmented by gorgeous flourishes of synthesizers and what almost sounds like dolphins playing, or signals from out of space. A redeemer in the second half, most def.
