Vintersorg – Orkan (2012)

After a four year absence, now we get the second release in the same amount of years from Vintersorg. “Orkan” continues the same predictable and highly typical path that Vintersorg has taken, providing just very few flashes of brilliant, and a whole lot more of the same. If you are a die-hard Vintersorg fan this release will be sweet music to your ears, but if you have been annoyed by the lack of creativity of the last release, then you will surely not like this one either.

The traditional Vintersorg vocal melodies nicely adorn the opener “Istid”. Here, the combination of growls and clean vocals are very well layered at first, and then used to near perfection as we are all used to, in bands like Borknagar and everything else that Vintersorg has been involved in. The fancy synth work is very typical and the riffing is as powerful as always. The progressive elements in the music make it quite enjoyable to hear, particularly on tracks like “Polarnatten”, “Myren”, and “Orkan”. The playfulness of “Myren” is something that we had missed from the band in the last release. We have to say that this is our favorite song in this release, and the only one we really liked too.

Musically “Orkan” is also quite enjoyable, but a dells in nothingness for a bit. Maybe this was what the band intended, but the looping guitar riffs really get tiresome after the third minute or so. The atmospheric passage near the three minute mark of “Norskenssyner” is actually pretty decent, making this song quite bearable, but nowhere near as good as anything on “Till Fjälls”. Closing with the unmemorable “Urvädersfången”, this release just goes down as a glass of water: nothing out of the ordinary. The musicians behind this band are pretty good and while they sound a lot better than any of the vanilla Progressive/Viking/Folk Metal bands we get, this effort leaves a lot to be desired.

We don’t particularly think that “Orkan” is a bad release, but for us it is just too linear and unimaginative compared to Vintersorg’s earlier work. All songs in this release are catchy and do contain some excellent melodic moments, but as a whole it feels more like the ‘extra’ tracks of “Jordpuls” than an actual new release. If you are a fan of the band, this is another good release from them and you should totally buy it, but if you are the occasional listener wanting something a bit less conventional, then you might be better off buying something else.

Release: July 10th, 2012

Genre: Viking/Progressive Metal

Country: Sweden