Review Summary: A cautionary tale that all creative people can learn from.
By the time I listened to Wintersun's début, the follow-up “Time” was already highly anticipated. There were continuous promises that this album would build upon everything the first did and the introduction of the fantastic
The Way of the Fire to Wintersun's live shows somehow made these claims credible. However, the years leading up to the actual release of this album showed a side to the band (frontman Jari Mäenpää specifically) that has come to define them, not only for detractors but for fans as well. Anyone familiar with the fictional band Dethklok would immediately be able to see parallels, as the cartoon band's obsessive fixation on sound fidelity and absurdly colossal ambitions were mirrored almost exactly by Wintersun. The album was eventually cut in half and released in 2012 as “Time I”.
A lengthy instrumental intro opens the album which might have been intended to set the mood, but ends up sounding like an excuse for Jari to flex his arrangement skills and justify his investment in orchestral synth patches and expensive computer hardware. It sounds gorgeous though, and shows Jari's excellent ear for melody. Had “Time I” not been a 40 minute album with a total of three actual songs on it, its inclusion on the album might have actually been excusable. It'd be more accurate to call the opening track an extended intro for the second track
Sons of Winter and Stars, easily the best song on the album.
As much as
Sons of Winter and Stars embodies Wintersun's excessive approach with synths and choirs and “killer riffs” galore, it's actually a really fun and dynamic track. Melodic themes are reincorporated and there's a real dramatic weight to the structure of the piece. The track itself has an orchestral intro which makes me question why the preceding track was necessary at all, but never mind. The guitar riffs are great, hearkening back to the best moments from the first album and Jari's clean vocals have improved dramatically.
In fact the entire band really delivers their A-game on this song, Jari's partner in crime Teemu Mäntysaari is easily on par with him in terms of guitar playing ability. Kai Hahto's drumming is excellent as always, though perhaps a bit too clinical this time round (that might be down to the sterile mix though, where not a single minor flaw or nuance is allowed to exist). Bassist Jukka Koskinen does a great job on the bass guitar, being able to compliment some of the legitimately demanding rhythm guitar parts with his fluid basslines... or so I've been told, I can barely even hear them underneath the 20,000 other things going on.
The Land of Snow and Sorrow is a great 4-minute folk metal tune trapped in an 8-and-a-half minute symphonic metal dud. Most of the song is built around a very basic and triumphant melody but before the vocals come in every possible harmonic idea Jari could think of has already been implemented. The melody and vocals are infectious and the song might have been great to sing along to if it weren't for the countless unnecessary vocal overdubs which do nothing but hinder the song's potential. The lyrics (as cheesy as they are) are actually very evocative and the song really picks up around halfway through with beautiful chord progressions, but it really does feel like too few ideas were spread over too much runtime.
Darkness and Frost and the title track are essentially the same song divided into two, perhaps to distract the listener from how little material is actually on the album. The former track serves as a buildup to the latter and does a perfectly decent job though it feels rendundant after the first track and
Land of Snow and Sorrow's atmospheric sections. Like the rest of the songs,
Time takes a while to get going but it feels more rewarding this time around when it actually picks up momentum. The chorus of the song is absolutely marvellous but again it feels like too much of the song is devoted to instrumental breaks.
The Devin Townsend influence is most apparent on this song, though it often feels like the “wall of sound” is about to crumble in on itself with too many musical elements competing for attention. The solo about halfway through the song is really fantastic however, and really shows Jari's skill as both a guitarist and a composer. After one final, triumphant chorus the song ends... well, should have ended. Clearly not enough of the album's 40 minute runtime was devoted to mood-setting symphonic noodling so it ends with 3 minutes of synthesised strings.
In the years following this album's release it seems like everyone in the metal community has an opinion on it. Some feel that it's an excellent piece of work that hints at even more great material yet to come, some feel that it's a completely overcooked mess of Spinal Tap proportions. And then there's people like me who see the album as a cautionary tale. I'm a musician and I see a lot of Jari's oft-ridiculed traits in myself. We want to deliver the finest product to our audience, we want to amaze and impress, we want to show people our fullest potential. We want to rise above making music that is merely “good” and make something on par with the classics we grew up with, the albums that really inspired us to become musicians in the first place. We want our listeners to feel the same sense of wonder and amazement we did and that drives us to strive for perfection.
But perfection doesn't exist, no album could ever be “perfect” and we're afraid that if we don't reach this impossible standard we'd be letting both ourselves down and our listeners. We hide away our work because we don't feel it's good enough and we tinker with it for years, losing track of the inspiration that drove us to make it in the first place and wondering why it doesn't make us feel excitement anymore. Maybe another synthesised string section would do the trick, maybe another vocal overdub, another solo, another interlude...?
Time II may never see the light of day, that's a real possibility. According to Jari he has albums upon albums worth of material that blows “Time I” and the debut out of the water. But as long as he strives for goals that are impossible to achieve, we won't know and eventually we won't care. If you are an artist yourself, keep in mind that it's better to release imperfect material and learn from your mistakes than it is to never release material at all.
