Evoking Winds
Your Rivers


4.5
superb

Review

by Melodeth USER (29 Reviews)
June 29th, 2025 | 24 replies


Release Date: 03/07/2024 | Tracklist

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.



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user ratings (11)
3.9
excellent


Comments:Add a Comment 
Muzz79
June 29th 2025


3638 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Heavy heavy grower this one

mystagogus
June 29th 2025


219 Comments

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

Agree, perfectly delivered fantasy/melodic BM with a character, was jamming this quite a lot when it was released. Cheers Muzz!

Hawks
Contributing Reviewer
June 29th 2025


107378 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Oh shit NICE!! Pos'd hard bro. Can't wait to hear this.

Azazzel
June 29th 2025


1146 Comments


okay you've sold me. take me to Skellige on a boat of bagpipes

Muzz79
June 29th 2025


3638 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Cheers lads. This truly is magnificent

TheTripP
June 30th 2025


4847 Comments


will check, sounds nice!

Hawks
Contributing Reviewer
June 30th 2025


107378 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Nice feature Muzz!!

Muzz79
July 1st 2025


3638 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Yeah nice. I definitely gravitate towards journey type metal and this is a stunning disc of that

Futures
July 2nd 2025


16266 Comments


nice one muzz! this sounds great, think i'll check this one out! belarus another check for me in black metal across the world. always love seeing takes on it from different regions.

Hawks
Contributing Reviewer
July 2nd 2025


107378 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Futures bro this band is sick. I gotta check their other stuff, but their 2023 album Bald Mountain is amazing.

Zac124
July 2nd 2025


3748 Comments

Album Rating: 3.5

Good album. Has some really nice solos too.

Muzz79
July 3rd 2025


3638 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Jam it futures, so many highs. I've been to Belarus - once to Minsk on their national day years and years ago was a massive party ha

hawks bald mountain got me into them same as you and this somehow topped baldy

Good call zac yeah solos on half the songs here just add more magick

Futures
July 3rd 2025


16266 Comments


whoa 5 bump! will get to this soon for sure man. and whoa what a connection, sounds like you had a great time haha.

mystagogus
July 4th 2025


219 Comments

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

Deserves a bump cause it's exceptional, from songwriting to arrangements to melodies to atmospheres.



On top Saor and Can Bardd level, above anything Sojourner have put up.

Hawks
Contributing Reviewer
July 6th 2025


107378 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Yeah, this fucking rips. Band slays so hard.

Zac124
July 7th 2025


3748 Comments

Album Rating: 3.5

The Lights of Skellige is such a banger

Muzz79
July 8th 2025


3638 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

^Gives me chills that song which is rare

Hawks
Contributing Reviewer
July 8th 2025


107378 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Band slays so hard. [2]

Muzz79
July 8th 2025


3638 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

[3] Their folk instruments are very distinctive and give an edge

PortalofPerfection
July 10th 2025


3386 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

This sounds like my type of stuff, definitely gonna check. Nice review!



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