Review Summary: A dark, beautiful, and atmospheric black metal album that should solidify the band’s position as one of the leaders of the scene today.
Winterfylleth is a black metal band formed in 2007 with the intention of ‘’honouring England’s proud ancestral heritage and rich national culture’’. Much like their fellow British black metallers
Wodensthrone and
Fen,
Winterfylleth focus on bleak, but beautiful atmospheres and dark, haunting melodies.
The Threnody of Triumph is their third album, after 2008’s
The Ghost of Heritage and 2010’s
The Mercian Sphere.
A good thing (depending on point of view of course) about
Winterfylleth’s music is that they are much more approachable that a lot of black metal (i.e.
Paysage d’Hiver). The production is very clean for the genre, yet the music does not lose any atmosphere or power because of this. The music is also quite melodic as it features quite a bit of a folk and post rock influence. The sound of the album is very reminiscent to that of early
Ulver , with its melodic riffs and choral chanting. However, the album is 10 songs in an hour, so it can still be quite a daunting listen, especially as it still has a lot of repetition in there.
Musically, the band is on top of form. Everything is done at a very epic scale.
Chris Naughton provides a very impressive and enchanting vocal performance, and the soaring riffs are absolutely mesmerising and even quite catchy.
Simon Lucas gives a very strong and frantic drum performance, however the bass is inaudible for the most part of the album, as per usual with a lot of black metal. With that said, it is still obvious that the band has an extremely strong rhythm section.
A highlight of the album is the ferocious opener
A Thousand Winters, with it’s beautiful melody and roaring vocals and ending with choral chanting. The song sets the bar high for the remainder of the album. One other highlight would be
A Memorial, with a catchy-for-black-metal riff and blast beats galore, an example of
Lucas’ strong performance. However, any of the songs could be highlights for different people as they can all take you on a journey and paint pictures in your mind of landscapes and medieval times.
The one real flaw with this album is that
Winterfylleth, now three albums in, have not really added much to their sound. It could be said that ‘’if something isn’t broken, then don’t fix it’’, but it would be nice to hear a bit more variety in there. However, that is only a small gripe as the band has created a dark and beautiful album. It may take a few listens to get into, as it is not as urgent as before, but it is wholly worth it as with repeated listens it only gets better. With
The Threnody of Triumph,
Winterfylleth show just how beautiful black metal can be without the use of keyboards or orchestral arrangements. Their best yet.
