Vesperian Sorrow – Stormwinds of Ages (2012)

Five years have passed since the release of “Regenesis Creation”, and finally Vesperian Sorrow is back with another monumental album of aggressive Symphonic Black Metal that will put all other band’s to shame. In “Stormwinds of Ages” the band delivers around 60 minutes of excellently crafted songs and a superb production that will blow you away and incite you to play it as loud as you can (we did). Having enough time to craft the 11 tracks of this release has helped the band achieve a near perfect album that features plenty of guest appearances and the hectic sound that the band is very characteristic for.

While every band in the USA is running to the next big trends like Deathcore, Metalcore, Cascadian Hipster Black Metal, Vesperian Sorrow continues perfecting unaffected by all the trendy crap in this country. Having toured all over the world, the band’s sound speaks for itself and with more tweaking since “Regenesis Creation” this album showcases the maturity of the band’s sound and musical abilities.

With “Sanguis Vitam Est” nicely setting the mood for this release, “Stormwinds of Ages” quickly delivers powerful riffing, massive drums and hellish vocals. The combination of all elements is very typical of this band and with the atmospheric keyboards in the back, their signature sound is very evident. Never obscuring the music, the atmospheric elements are always very well balanced, something that Dimmu Borgir lost after “Enthroned Darkness Triumphant”.

Featuring excellent melodic passage and spoken sections (ala old Dimmu Borgir), “An Empire to Mourn” delivers another aural assault filled with blastbeats and excellent guitar work. Mixing things up, “Casting Dawn Into Shadows” features angelic female vocals (courtesy of Erika Tandy) that nicely contrast the overall power and aggression behind Vesperian Sorrow’s music. The seemingly ‘traditional’ “Crown of Glass” has some clean Spanish guitar-like sections that are just amazing and during the melodic passage of this song make it nearly orgasmic.

Whether your are looking for aggressive or melodic sections, all tracks in this album have enough of both to satisfy anybody. The sections of the guitar solos of “Legacies Befallen” are one example of a single element that takes the song in a different direction only to come back to pummeling riffs and hectic drumming. One of our favorite tracks of this release is “Eye of the Clocktower” due to its very interesting vocal lines and brilliant guitar work.

The mixture of vocals in “Relic of Impurity” make it another one of our favorite tracks since it shows how a little change in things give this band a completely different face, and also the guitar solos (Carl August Tideman provides some of them in this album) here are excellent. With the album winding down, “Death She Cried” provides another Gothic Symphonic Black Metal track with some more awesome solos. Closing with the powerful “Of Opiates and Accolades” the band nicely leaves us wanting more and hopefully we don’t have to wait another five years for it.

In general, “Stomwinds of Ages” is just fucking amazing (we lack better words to describe it). This release features heaps of little details that will be unraveled the more you listen to the album. The guitar work is outstanding and very powerful, the drumming is excellent and the vocals are super aggressive. The guest appearances, especially the female vocals and the guest solos just make this release more unfair for other bands to even come close to it. We surely hope that Vesperian Sorrow manages to find a good deal to release this album and spread their music all over the world since this release deserves to be heard.

Release: TBD 2012

Country: USA