Background Information
After the fall of
Vargartron, a new band by the name of
Vintersorgwas born. When
Vargartron "passed away", front man
Vintersorg (or
Andreas Hedlund which is his real name) decided to continue by his own. The finalresult from the left overs from
Vargartron became now
Vintersorg, a one man crew from the beginning but he was not alone at all times.
Vargher helped him with most of the sound effects and electronics and guitarist
Mattias Marklund is now an official band member.
Vintersorg has a progressive metal base with influences from other metal genres like: black-metal, viking-metal, folk-metal and perhaps power-metal.
Vintersorg is still active with his current band but he has recently joined as singer for the band called
Borknagar, and
Vintersorg also has other ongoing projects as well. He is a member of two other bands called
Otyg (a folk inspired band) and
Havayoth which is a gothic inspired band.
Vintersorg was at the beginning of a one man project, and people had been helping
Hedlund throughout his career. The first three albums (including an EP) included
Vargher as companion. Later guitarist
Mattias Marklund joined up and became a band member, and the last few albums have been performed by a crew of four people, with one of them are the well-known bassist called
Steve DiGiorgio (
Death,
Testament,
Iced Earth,
Sadus and more) and
Asgeir Mickelson (
Borknagar,
Lunaris,
Ihsahn and more).
The Crew
Anyway, this was the first album when
Marklund was introduced to the band alongside
Hedlund, and the man himself are responsible for one of the guitars, vocals (of course), keyboards and the bass (I assume).
Hedlund does not have a drummer, as
Vargher was responsible for the drum programming in their first three albums but here,
Hedlund programmed the drums by himself. I can just say that this album was made with excellent skill, as
Hedlund's vocals are basically incredible. Clean, forceful and melodic singing to raspy old-school black-metal shrieking, and then add some semi-dark priest chanting vocals on top of that makes
Hedlund a highly skilled vocalist indeed. His vocals make his music to sound very mystic, powerful, interesting and of course, enjoyable. Take any person and let them listen to these vocals and they will definitely like it, except for the black-metal rasp (depending on the person),which I think is excellent singing. The keyboard also contributes with very melodic and powerful notes, and some songs have these clear organ sounds while others have similar sounds. Most of these songs do not have a lot of keyboard parts in them but once you hear the keyboards you will like them, I'm sure.
Hedlund's guitar skills might not be very impressive or highly technical but he can pull off some nice sounding riffs, solos and acoustics, and most times during the guitar work you will notice a lot of simple but varied shredding while the lead work remains almost unnoticed in most of the songs. The bass also remains hidden and is basically just playing the rhythms. You can't hear the bass very well and I don't think that the bass contributes with a powerful sound either, but if you really concentrate you might hear the bass but it is very overshadowed by the rest of the instruments.
Hedlund has surely done a great job with the drum programming, and here you have a quite large amount of different drum patterns; you have very intense half-black-metal drumming and you also have slower and heavier patterns, calm and peaceful patterns are also noticeable in this album too.
Mattias Marklund does a great job on this album with his guitar playing, but
Marklund's guitar skills appear to be basically the same level as
Hedlund's guitar skills, perhaps a bit higher though. Nothing highly impressive but there is a clear difference towards the better on this album compared to previous albums from
Vintersorg.
Album Information
This album is called
Cosmic Genesis and it has a bit of a different sound compared to the other albums, the biggest difference is that all the songs (except two) are all in English this time. This might be a bad thing or a good thing, but I think that this sounded awesome but I still think that the band lost a bit of their uniqueness when English was introduced as primary language. Since I'm not from an English speaking country I thought that the band became more of a metal band this time, as it felt more black-metallish when the raspy vocals appeared, and reminded me of
Nightwish except with male vocals. The lyrics are also different; these lyrics are concentrated now on astronomy, philosophy and science, with all of the previous albums had lyrics bases on old Swedish mythology and nature. Then what about the songs then? Here we have intensive and fast songs such as
Naturens Galleri and
Ars Memorative, and many songs have quite fast drum patterns but most of them are still quite peaceful and atmospheric. Some of the most varied songs with many different sorts of "musical sections" such vocal and tempo shifting might be songs like
Astral And Arcane,
A Dialogue With The Stars and
Algol. This album also has a few calmer songs too, with these songs being
Cosmic Genesis,
Om Regnbågen Materialiserades and
Rainbow Demon. And then we have a ballad sound song at the end called
The Enigmatic Spirit, which features a very calm song pattern and a melodic acoustic as the main dish. But remember that most of the songs have intensive drum patternsor intensive song patterns, but I think that these are easy digested songs, as almost every song on here is very catchy, heavy and sometimes a bit overwhelming.
My Conclusion
I really liked this album, it was almost better with English lyrics, but then again, it's boring for already those speaking English but great for us non-English speaking people. I think that the band became more of a metal band because of this but I still think that the band lost some of their uniqueness; good or bad; I still liked it very much though. I liked say six or seven of a total of nine songs, most of them just appealed to me better than the others but I got some favourite songs, that's for sure. I think that this is an excellent album, not their best but it was very close, and if you happen to like power-metal you will like this album. This is not power-metal but I think it sounds more like that than progressive metal, and I think that this actually sounded like
Nightwish but in male format.
Pros
+ Incredibly clear and forceful vocals
+ Good variety among the songs
+ Great musicianship
+ English lyrics made this sound more like a metal band
+ Powerful songs
Cons
- The English lyrics lowered the uniqueness
- I think it would been better if
all songs were in English
Recommended Tracks
-- Astral And Arcane
-- Rainbow Demon
-- A Dialogue With The Stars
-- The Enigmatic Spirit
This is an album of pure excellence; I will give this album my strongest
4/5
