SOLENS RÖTTER

Only by the beggining of record you can easily note that this is the most well-recorded/producted Vintersorg album. It has very defined sounding for each instrument, speacially for the drum, which is very evident in this album.

The music here, its a condensation of all that Vintersorg done along the years. It is folk, it is dark, it is prog, it has his growls, it has his clean vocals, it has all that a Vintersorg fan want and expect from him. Very indicated for newcomers too, cause here you can see all he's about.

The musical evolution is very noticing. Musical constructions are more complex than ever and Vintersorg's singing got better with the years. Now he sings consistently and with more feeling than before, when his clean voice sounded a little forced.

An excelent album, for me, the best one in the band's career. Indicated for fans of folk, black and prog metal.

9/10

From their days of Swedish Folk Metal, Vintersorg has come full circle with this release. Well sort of. This album is a throw back to early days of Folk Metal, (including going back to writing in all Swedish) however it also uses their progressive elements from their newer work. This a good album, and very unique.

It may seem crazy to think an album could use elements of Black Metal, progressive rock, folk music and avant-garde but we are prog fans! We should know anything is possible. Indeed, this album uses it all. Beautiful acoustic guitar melodies, heavy riffs, clean vocals, growls (sometimes the two at the same time!) tremolo picking and blast beats, fairly complex drums beats and guitar riffs, keyboard, and folk instruments. Often all of these are used in the course of a single song!

While this could be considered a "Folk Metal" album I think that is silly and pointless. There are so many sub-genres out there and often they have major overlap, (and some are not even really different!) I guess it could be called "Extreme Prog" maybe do it's sometimes harsh vocals but really, I like to keep things simple and I am 100% confident in calling this album Prog-Metal.

This is a really good album and some stand out songs are "Perfektionisten", "Spirar Och Gror", and "Att Bygga En Ruin". While all of the songs are good, and the ones mentioned above are real gems, some songs are just not really that great.

I think this is a great album for ANY fan of prog-metal and I do think more open minded prog fans can really enjoy this album. It is truly progressive and compared to some other bands, it is really not that brutal or extreme. Great for prog metal fans and more open minded proggers in general.

Four Stars

'Solens Rötter' - Vintersorg (8/10)

In what can be described as a 'return to their roots,' Vintersorg has arguably created their most consistent album to date. Moving away from the avant-garde leanings of the previous two albums and making a return to the viking folk metal sound the band was founded on, there is still a level of progressive ambition retained that should appease those that found themselves moreso drawn to the stranger-sounding, more recent material. Despite their potential labelling as 'black metal,' 'Solens Rötter' is a deeply melodic journey, and seeks to break Vintersorg out of the genre almost entirely.

The album's strength relies greatly on the strong clean singing abilities of Andreas Hedlund. While there are the typical black metal growls here as well, much of the songwriting is centered around the immense vocal harmonies the man can produce. Meaning 'roots of the sun' in Swedish, 'Solens Rötter' is also the first album in almost a decade that Vintersorg writes completely in their mother tongue. While this may rob the average english-speaking listener of the firsthand abililty to delve into the subject matter being sung at hand, the language is phonetically very well suited for the music, and gives the album an even more Scandanavian vibe to it.

The generally optimistic (yet beautiful) clean singing and polished production gives the music a light feeling overall, despite obvious attempts in places to be 'dark.' As has been said before, Vintersorg gets back in touch with the concept of 'folk metal' here, and the typical metal instruments are mixed in with much more traditional sounds; giving 'Solens Rötter' a very medieval feeling to it. While there is certainly progressiveness to the music here (comparisons to prog death giants Opeth is not unfounded), many of the songs here are generally straightforward in their structure, although each track is very strong. The album certainly opens with one of it's strongest pieces however; 'Döpt I En Jökelsjö.' Through an array of acoustic guitars, black metal growls, rapid fury and finally the great harmonized clean vocal work, the opener is a perfect crash course in everything that a listener can expect from 'Solens Rötter.'

The album's sense of flow isn't particularly great and the sound is generally quite uniform throughout, but 'Solens Rötter' is an immense journey. Anyone under the impression that metal lacks melody as a genre, should certainly check out this great album from Vintersorg, and possibly reconsider their opinions.