Review Summary: melodic groove
Windrunner is a metalcore band, self-described as "melodic groove", from Vietnam. I cannot, for the life of me, find the names of their current lineup anywhere on the internet, but I do know that from the time of their first album
MAI (2018), until the time of their second album
TAN (2022), they acquired a different vocalist, and went from a 5-piece to a 4-piece. While their original vocalist Duong took care of both singing and screaming duties, their current lead vocalist Nân only sings, as one of the guitarists has taken on the harsh vocal duties. Much of their sound instrumentally has stayed the same however, with their signature loud, atmospheric, chugging riffs being ever-present. It is solely in the performance of their new vocalist that I feel Windrunner has scalped their new identity, and found overall improvement despite an apparent revolving-door lineup.
TAN wields a straightforward block of ten tracks, which, excluding the instrumental opener, are all written similarly. The guitars alternate between heavy and melodic passages, occasionally accompanied with synths, while Nân floats through verses and choruses, which usually conclude with a bridge with harsh vocals. Speaking of these harsh vocals, Windrunner brought on two guests – Tobias Rische from Novelists, and Sota from Graupel – to take care these duties on the tracks
Sardonyx and
Mahogany respectively. Both did a phenomenal job on their feature, in comparison to whichever Windrunner instrumentalist took on the screams in the other tracks, in which he sounds like he is severely straining his vocal chords.
I need to talk about Nân more however, because her performance cannot be undermined. She has complete mastery of her voice, trilling notes, changing pitch, and sustaining melodies in accordance to the instrumentals with ease. Her lyrics, of the ones that are available online (why is it so difficult to find thorough information about this band online?) seem deeply personal, and are also loosely coordinated with the track-names, all of which are color-based. For example, the song
Scarlette contains a vivid chorus, which reads, "Rose-mallows have fallen to the ground / Had me down on my knees, head in the clouds / Rose-mallows have fallen to the ground / But words and whispers…".
The final defining characteristic of Windrunner's music that needs brought to attention, which was prevalent on
MAI and makes a return on
TAN, is the instrumental-heavy production choice. It isn't just singularly the guitars nor the bass (and thankfully not just the drums), but as a whole, the instrumental track is placed loudly in the forefront, with the vocals being much quieter in the mix. Now you'd probably think that this would be a complaint of mine after my raving about Nân's vocals, but I find that the overall "shoegaze-y" effect created by the loud, grooving riffs that are sprinkled with melody only emphasize her performance, making it a force of nature striving to be heard rather than a beacon of beauty that overstays its welcome.
I want to conclude this review by pondering Windrunner's classification genre-wise. I mentioned in the first sentence that the band calls themselves "melodic groove", which is an accurate description, but in my own mind I had them filed under "progressive metalcore" for a long time, until listening to Tan several times made me rethink. Windrunner uses the "djent" tone for their guitars, but the riffs are far too simplistic in comparison to the technicality of the genre-defining bands such as (early) Erra, (early) Northlane, and (early) Novelists. However, simply just labeling them as "metalcore" is disingenuous to how distinctive Windrunner's sound is compared to all the bread-and-butter bands that pepper the genre. The conclusion that I'm likely going to stick with is that Windrunner is simply just Windrunner, and as their name implies, they are going to fly freely in whichever direction.
