Vintersorg – Orkan

Last year Vintersorg with his project band released “Jordpuls“, an album which left completely the clear progressive attitude and returned to the blackish primal style of his first albums. However “Jordpuls” continued to have many points of the pure progressive metal era. The same applies to “Orkan” too, but now Vintersorg does it a little better. 2012 was a very busy year for him, because he was working for the latest Borknagar album too, at the same time with “Orkan”, and I think that the best work he did was in “Urd”. To tell the truth, “Orkan” is difficult to listening, but doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily bad. It’s very difficult due to the complex tracks and a fistful of melodies that make it hard to leave you something at the end of the album.

The storm ( Orkan translated ) starts immediately with “Istid”, a very capable song with a lot of melodic keyboards and blackish guitars accompanied with a fusion of operatic vocals and growls. With a few words, it’s a usual Vintersorg track as the ones that made the artist famous. Many people categorize Vintersorg in folk or viking metal genre too. Perhaps that’s due to the rhythm of the guitars because it’s true that they bring out something north folkloric. “Ur Stjärnstoft Är Vi Komna” is another proof of that. It reminds a little bit of Bathory, a little bit of Borknagar, a little bit of Fejd and all of these with the keyboard’s and vocal’s progressive additions. Many would agree that “Polarnatten” is the best track in “Orkan”. With these symphonic keyboards and the black metal storm of pagan character riffs surely make great impressions to the listener. Besides, Vintersorg does maybe his best vocals here. The next song, “Myren” follows the same compositional ways with the previous songs but even if it seems a bit unnecessary, somehow it becomes better as you listen to it.

Title song is an other great song of the album. Very stunning keyboard melodies coming from the medieval censturies, maybe the best operatic vocals that a singer ever made and deep growls back from the clean vocals. All of these make an explosive mix in the listener’s ears. and there is a very good solo for those who didn’t convinced yet. “Havets Nåd” is the track that combines both Vinterorg’s styles, black metal and progressive metal that he played from the ’00s ’till “Solens Rötter” and “Jordpuls”. Suddenly, this furious continuing is decreasing as the last two songs “Norrskenssyner” and “Urvädersfången” can be characterizing as filling songs in the album and hardly are above mediocrity. “Orkan” would easily satisfy Vinterorg’s fans. It’s a very capable album, with very good music compositions for progressive metal. Maybe this isn’t the album that someone can go crazy, but the mixing of progressive music and blackish growls is what make Vintersorg special and make him escape from the ordinary progressive metal bands , with all of these boring compositions and dumpish character.