Let’s start with the good points. Shadow World (Spinefarm Records) by Wolfheart is really well produced. It sounds lovely. Excellent, rich guitar & bass tones, and you could drive a bus through the space Tuomas Saukkonen has created between each part, even during the thrashy bits. If you’re not familiar with Scandinavian sound desk virtuosos, it’s seriously impressive.
However, if like me you are familiar with such bands, then (unless you’re Saukkonen fan or an obsessive collector of the blackened scene) I think you’ll find Shadow World slightly underwhelming.
If Death Metal had elevators, this would be the soundtrack.
When a band with a bruising great unit of a frontman (Saukkonen) is describing themselves as “Winter Metal” and their label is promising “mesmerizing melodies graceful enough to stop the listener in their tracks, along with the most furious of frostbites to finish him or her off.”, I want to hear blizzards, geysers and exploding icebergs. Sadly, you get none of these things here. This album’s more like a steaming cup of Horlicks.
The album opens up with a (presumably wintry) bit of ivory tickling before ‘Aeon of Cold’ starts off with a kid’s portion of Immortal-lite blasting, developing with standard-issue Death/Black metal vocals into the overly long see-saw chord progressions on half-time drums so typical of the blackened sound. There’s a cavernous, full-of-echo midsection with more ivory and then we’re riding the see-saw until the end.
It’s the same story for the next two tracks – both follow the same pattern with a different arrangement. Sure, there’s a few riffs here and there, but these are middle-eights & breaks when they should be hooks. Boo.
‘Last of all Winters’ breaks the mould but threatens to banish the listener to the Land of Nod. ‘Abyss’ starts to raise the game, finding something of a pulse that persists into ‘Resistance’ but it’s too little too late. If you weren’t asleep before ‘Abyss’ kicked in, the last song ‘Veri’ will have you in the Kingdom of Morpheus before the intro is done.
5.0/10
PHILIP PAGE