Review Summary: My friend, you will soon meet the gods
For many metal bands, drawing on your homeland is a key opportunity in the all-important point of difference, a chance to behold its musical heritage and the instruments of yesteryear. With this focus and a basis on “The Witcher” fantasy series, Belarusian band Evoking Winds produced the immense record “Your Rivers” in 2024.
Their previous album “Bald Mountain” just a year prior in 2023 opened my mind to a next level of cinematic folk black metal that was my album of the year for most of that year. It certainly had a distinctive sound to go with their storytelling, reminding me of the first time I came across Bal-Sagoth in the mid nineties with their glorious “Starfire Burning Upon the Ice-Veiled Throne of Ultima Thule”. And this is precisely the nostalgia that Evoking Winds evokes, a feeling of a bigger picture and the cycle of life.
Owing to the conceptual inspiration of “The Witcher”, “Your Rivers”, like “Bald Mountain”, has an imbued folklore emphasis that immediately makes me sit up, carrying a magnetism and an aura. The informal tag of “Wind Metal” may sound clumsy until you hear this and rings true with the opener “Verily Said” alone. Apart from the scene setting mountainscape and its inevitable wind, the combination of flutes, harmonicas and local bagpipes (above all else) together contribute to an accurate “Wind Metal” descriptor.
The smell of acrid smoke and horses' breath greets us “On the Autumn Road” before a powerful blast of melodic black metal washes over the landscape. Lead guitars weave through the intricate tremolos before the signature bagpipes fade us to the next irresistible chapter.
And it’s truly not until “The Lights of Skellige” do you start to realize this could be a serious record. The culmination of Evoking Winds in one epic composition and surely everything the band stands for and represents, at least musically. It is this song that stirs this wanderer to the bone and demanded this review. Like all true epics there’s a build up over a number of minutes before the bagpipes melodies at the halfway point and mirrored guitar leads combine in sublime atmospheric harmony.
Evoking Winds have swiftly released 5 full lengths of epic folk infused black metal since the debut in 2008 but unfortunately are not as well-known as their peers Sojourner, Can Bardd or Saor and nowhere near legends Windir and Caladan Brood. But there’s a distinct flavour with Evoking Winds that has such a pull and I can narrow it down to use of their local bagpipes and accompaniments with flutes, harp and harmonica. Songs like “Lilac and Gooseberries” and “Unseen Companion” are flush with bagpipes based melodies which have an accordion resonance and meld brilliantly with the ferocity of the black metal.
Key to its presentation is the album’s cinematic framing, complete with narrated segues which follows the structure of albums’ past. “Farewell, Vesemir” is a forest eulogy “The fire’s now raising its sparks. My friend, you will soon meet the gods” spoken in a recurring cameo by a professional voice American, just one of the host of contributors in keys, orchestration and cultural inputs.
The bedrock of this style of metal is the kindling to conflagration and Evoking Winds have mastered the art as “Time of Contempt” and “Brotherhood of Brenna” attest with the latter only second to “The Lights Of Skellige” in this platter.
The rousing “Dagger, Wood and Fire” manages to keep interest high and the excellent closing title track fulfills the band’s edict in delivering “stormy blast beats come together with epic ambiance and a healthy dose of Eastern Europe’s dark tales” to affirm one hell of a point of difference.
