Review Summary: Damian Anton Ojeda has done it yet again!
It will never cease to amaze me just how much music Damian Anton Ojeda produces every single year. The man behind projects such as Trha, Sadness, letterstoyou and others just continues to pump out banger after banger at an alarmingly consistent rate. His commitment to his craft is more than commendable and the fact that he is continuously honing his craft is nothing short of amazing. Here we have yet another Damian project, Midwinter Sunset, and on July 26th of this year, he put out his first two EPs under the new moniker. The first one is a black metal release with heavy undertones of punk and neocrust. The second, and the one I'm talking about here, cuts a lot of the punk influences and focuses on straight-up, savage black metal.
Damian has dabbled in genres like screamo, emoviolence and metalcore as of late, but this EP sees him going back to his roots, if you will. When he started Trha, he was mainly influenced by raw, atmospheric black metal bands such as Paysage d'Hiver and Darkspace, drawing the listener in with fuzzy, lofi production and buzzsaw riffage. This EP follows a lot of that same formula, emphasizing the tremolo picking and static-like atmospheres of the aforementioned bands. Simply put, this release has enough riffs in its near half-hour runtime to put a smile on any black metal fan's face. This is pure, evil black metal at its core and it's nice to see Damian harken back to some of the stylings that made Trha so popular in the first place. That project, in recent years, has drawn a lot of influences from post-metal and blackgaze, but this EP goes to show that Damian never forgot where he started. It's not always a good thing to go backwards, but
Midwinter Sunset II proves that he still has the chops to create some of the most blasphemous music that this genre has to offer nowadays.
Like I said, the emphasis here is most definitely on the riffs and the atmosphere they create. They maintain some sense of melody throughout, but the fact is, these riffs will simply punish the listener into the dirt. I haven't even mentioned the drumming performance yet, which is incredible in its own right. Blast beats are the signature style in the black metal genre and here, they sound as if Damian is playing like a man possessed by a demon straight from Hell itself. Black metal has a certain sloppiness to it that is endearing and that has always been the case. What this EP lacks in technical proficiency, it more than makes up for with pure passion and love for the genre's roots. Fans of this type of music need that every once in a while. Adding in elements from other genres is all well and good, but sometimes, and more often than not in my case personally, fans of the genre's roots want nothing more than what is provided here: frostbitten riffs, blasting snares and a vocal performance that could peel the paint off of a wall.
Midwinter Sunset's two EPs are exactly what I want as someone who's favorite thing about black metal is the cold and barbaric nature of it. Think about bands like Darkthrone, Mayhem and Bathory. They weren't setting out initially to wow anyone with their ability. They were simply some kids that had a vision of music that went against what death metal was doing at the time. Raw production was the norm, muddiness was in style and blasphemy was the feeling that they wanted to portray. In that aspect, Midwinter Sunset certainly succeeds with flying colors. Yes, Damian has created music all over the genre map and he will continue to do so, but it's nice to know that in 2026, he can still create some of the most wintry sounding black metal that fans have ever seen. The pioneers of the genre would certainly be proud.
