Vintersea – Woven into Ashes

Vintersea is, to put it simply, an awesome band. I’ve known them since they only had one album released, and despite its excessive length, poor production and many bugs I would have called “rookie mistakes”, it was good enough that they remained on my radar since then. We are now at album nr. 3 and if there’s one thing that becomes clearly visible, it’s that for this band, every album needs to be a massive step up. From the first to the second album, we saw them clearing up pretty much all the mistakes and really coming into their own with an impressive high-quality work. And now, with “Woven into Ashes” we see them reaching for the stars in full-blown epicness.

Vintersea’s sound can be described as a clever combination of melancholic progressive metal, melodic black metal and progressive death metal. It is heavy, jarring and cathartic but at the same time very eclectic, varied and emotionally expressive. Intellect, ingenuity, creativity and a badass attitude all come together in this new work, as we see the band coming together in full force, balancing out all their influences and ideas into a cohesive flow of sound that will keep both the intellectual prog nerds and the moshpit-happy maniacs hooked.

Vintersea – At The Gloaming Void

But what is it that makes this album such a well-rounded release? Well first off, all the musicians have reached an incredible level of technical skill. Drummer Jeremy Spencer has reached a level of performance and a style easily comparable to Dan Presland of Ne Obliviscaris. His delivery of fast death metal drumming, fusing blast beats and double kick patterns with cleverly placed alternations and transitions (see intro riff to ‘At the Gloaming Void’) provides a solid and pulverizing rhythmic groundwork for all the extreme sections. But he’s also grown more versatile in his playing style, which is why we see very playful and dynamic grooves (‘Crescent Eclipse’) as well as an ability to create a very deep and permeating atmosphere by use of toms and floor toms (‘No Tomorrow’). Bassist Karl Whinnery, is starting to border on tech-death territory with the sound he delivers, but doesn’t quite make it a point to flash out and show-off his technique. In fact, despite the obviously impressive performance of all members, the music never feels like an ego-flex. No moment is unnecessarily extravagant or out-of-place, and no instrument fully escapes the cohesive flow of sound that makes nearly each song an unstoppable surge of power.

Guitarists Jorma Spaziano and Riley Nix, both deliver very satisfying performances, both from a technical and a compositional perspective. The bite and attack on the guitar effect is an instant dopamine kick and the black-metal edge on the tremolo picking riffs brings just the right amount of creepy, ritualistic feel to the wall of sound, to make it more than just ‘heavy’. It becomes captivating and exciting to a different level (see screaming section in ‘Unveiling Light’). You can also clearly hear that the guitar delivery is thought-out as a 2-piece. They always play different parts yet they always complement each other beautifully. The solo sections are also very impressive. There’s plenty of speed and shredding, but it always takes a while to get there, with the solos being used to set a certain mood and then to evolve from there, along with the changes in the background music. Again, ‘Unveiling Light’ is a great example, though certainly not the only one. The spurts of shredding synchronized with double kicks in ‘Parallel Duality’ were another favourite moment of mine.

Vintersea – Unveiling Light

And then we have Avienne Low, who’s delivery hasn’t changed all that much from what she did on the previous record. Admittedly part of that might be because there wasn’t all that much room left to improve. Her screams are either incredibly scarring on the high-end or as guttural as they could possibly get on the low end, and her alternations between various screaming registers give a superb back-and forth effect between the various tones of the music. The clean vocal delivery however, was updated to new heights, and I mean that literally. She reaches higher notes than I heard on their previous records, and she puts forward a more emotional and engaging delivery overall. The ballad ‘Into the Horizon’ is the one moment where her clean vocal delivery is put under the spotlight and she’s really allowed to shine in full glory. On top of this, the album is loaded with vocal layering, which often gets somewhat drowsy and hypnotic, and somehow makes sense even when done over riff-heavy sections or overlapped with screaming. ‘Into The Horizon’ is also where the guys get to be in touch with their feelings. Jeremy gives some spacey, gentle grooves with gradual build-ups and teasing, Karl’s bass SINGS and the guitars fill the atmosphere with echoing, clean guitar parts.

But what is great about Vintersea is their ability to put these extremes together and make them work. While ‘Into the Horizon’ shows them at their calmest and ‘Devil’s Churn’ has going full Satan mode, all the other songs seem to bring a clever mix, varying the dosage of fast and slow, heavy and soft, and most importantly, knowing how to alternate them in the most fluid and coherent manner. ‘Parallel Duality’ is the best song to see their ability to gradually evolve from a calm and soothing melody all the way into screamy extreme metal and back again.

Vintersea – Into The Horizon

I think that pretty much sums up the most important parts that make ‘Woven into Ashes’ such a good album. But there are still some key moments that simply require a mention. The intro theme to the album is an undeniable tribute to Ne Obliviscaris – ‘Curator’, but it is integrated in the song so beautifully that it doesn’t feel like a ripoff. ‘Lonesome Tide’ makes use of acoustic guitars and in typical prog fashion, also includes a solo from some folky wind instrument. I’d be lying if I could tell exactly what it was but my money goes on ‘flute’. And to top it off, the album close, ‘No Tomorrow’ is 9-minutes long and is based on a choral theme inducing deep space imagery as well as gothic cathedral, to the point where my mind decided to call it, the “Chvrch ov the future” theme. The album closer is a true journey, showing not only a superb drum solo from Jeremy, but also their most epic, grandiose moments as a full band, creating a huge sense of closure, but also leaving you wondering, what will the next chapter bring. Because if there’s one thing I know for sure after hearing this album from Vintersea, it’s that I’m not ok with it being the last one! Here’s to many more from this phenomenal rising star!

Track List:

1. Unveiling Light (05:22)
2. Devil’s Churn (06:09)
3. Crescent Eclipse (07:43)
4. At The Gloaming Void (05:31)
5. Parallel Duality (07:12)
6. Lonesome Tide (06:04)
7. Into The Horizon (03:51)
8. No Tomorrow (08:49)