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Review Summary: One of the best black metal albums of 2015. Black metal’s continued strength since its emergence can be attributed to several factors, but perhaps the most important appeal of the genre is its ability to evoke the primordial glory of the natural world. Few forms of music can be more effective at inspiring the awe of complete solitude in the wilderness or the tranquility of a snowy day. Philadelphia’s Haethen has captured this power in a new-perfect way with their second release, Shaped By Aeolian Winds. The album cover's depiction of a lone man standing amid a darkening forest is both beautiful and foreboding, a worthy representation of this album musically.
Shaped By Aeolian Winds is the Haethen's first full-length effort, following their EP Wanderer, released in 2009. It is a remarkably confident and cohesive release, especially considering its early position in the band's discography. The album flows very well, beginning excellently with an unusually brilliant intro track “Entranced By The Unknowing”, before preceding into solid song after solid song. While there are no clearly weak points on this album, “Amongst The Forlorn Larch” does stand out as perhaps the most fantastic song.
Musically, Haethen is quite ambitious here. There is a mix of diverse sections throughout most songs, from full-scale black metal to folk interludes to hazy prog in the middle section of “Fragments Of Spectral Uncertainty”. The fact that all of these elements fit together so well is quite remarkable. Haethen has crafted an album here which should appeal to any fan of the more atmospheric edges of black metal. While the lyrical allusions to natural themes and the substantial folk elements lead to the album approaching Agalloch territory in some places, Haethen ultimately pursues a much more straightforward and aggressive black metal style.
Any flaws of Shaped By Aeolian Winds are few and far between. The most obvious one might be that, in several cases, the songs might meander excessively and overstay their welcome to a minor extent.This is a relatively small complaint though, with the album consistently being able to hold the listener’s attention throughout its nearly-hour-long runtime.
Ultimately, this release certainly positions Haethen as a key band to watch within the black metal scene. More than that, though, Shaped By Aeolian Winds is an astonishingly great debut full-length which has earned a place among the best releases of the year. Just wait for how good it will sound in the fall and winter.
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Album Rating: 4.5
This album is available for name-your-price download on Bandcamp.
https://haethen.bandcamp.com/
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Ha, is that a rhetorical question?
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This is a pretty cool album, yes. A little derivative tho.
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Could you have written a more cliched and monotonous introduction? Do the church burnings in any way relate to this piece of music? Fuck off
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No review should ever start with "X is a unique genre."
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
@ZippaThaRippa, sorry you didn't like the review. I wasn't trying to say that the church burnings related this album, but I felt that it was relevant to the overview of the genre which I was tying in with the album. I can definitely see the intro taking up to much time within the review, but that's what I was attempting to do.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
@ZippaThaRippa If your going to criticise make sure that its constructive. ''Fuck Off'' is not a helpful criticism.
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Review needs more details. This has black metal and prog and folk and ferocious vox and powerful riffs yeah? But what does that all sound like?
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
@zaruyache, thanks for the constructive criticism. This is only my third review, so any advice is appreciated.
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Nicely written review but the content is rather underwhelming. I think most people that come to this review already know what black metal stands for, so the very lengthy introduction is unnecessary, it takes up half of your review. U need to tell us more about the actual album, cause ultimately thats what i expect to get from a review, 2 little paragraphs just isn't enough.
Nevertheless it reads nicely, and I am by no means an expert on reviewing, but I think the points I make are fairly obvious.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
@Psynuts, thanks. You make a lot of valid points, I'll definitely work on that stuff for my next review.
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Pretty decent review so pos'd. Will check the album
| | | Album Rating: 3.5 | Sound Off
shaped by windy winds
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
So good, easily in my top 5 metal records for 2015 so far.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Probably same for me, m/.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5 | Sound Off
This otherwise tolerable review is marred by the most ham-fistedly clichéd introductory paragraph yet affixed to Sputnik. How you single-handedly crammed quite so obsessively much banal pandering to execrable mainstream consumer stereotypes of what constitutes "black metal" [read: basically, Satan] into one single paragraph is beyond me. It's worse than simply awful. Were the literary impossible possible (...it isn't), this entire paragraph would preferably be excised, redacted, and composted post-haste.
You make the repeated a priori assumption that black metal "...clearly lack[s] appeal to the casual listener." On the evidence-based contrary, Dissection's "Storm of the Light's Bane" remains Sputnik's 4th and RYM's 9th highest rated album for 1995, Burzum's "Filosofem" RYM's 7th highest rated album for 1996, and Emperor's "Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk" Sputnik's 12th and RYM's 9th highest rated album for 1997. R-your-bloody-M, the patron saint of casual listeners everywhere. R-your-gorram-M, the most blanderized metaratings aggregator yet vomited up from the jizz-splattered underbelly that is Silicon Valley venture capital. It simply doesn't get more casual.
I could go on. The insinuation that the principal purpose of music is to "gain a wide audience" rather than, you know, actually compose good music. The Tipper Gore-like denunciations of "murder and church burning," so redolent of the halcyon good ol' days of the Parents Music Resource Center (PRMC).
I'll stop there. For the sake of us all, lest Cthulhu's keyboard minions claim the last of other hapless readers' witless sanity, reconsider at least the first several sentences of this review -- and preferably the whole review.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
I've done some revisions on the review, due to the multiple complaints, particularly about the intro. For the record, I was not trying to demean black metal as a genre in any way, simply overview it. Ultimately, I realize that it was easy to interpret that paragraph differently, though, and describing how the genre is perceived by many people really wasn't necessary for this review in any case.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Gonna have to give this one a few more listens. Good stuff so far though.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Bumped it - digging this a lot
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Only jammed this the one time, Damn solid album though
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