Anyone want to tell me what happened to Borknagar?

[Einherjar86]

It's overrated and Vintersorg is a faggot. I thought that was self evident.

Evidently not; it has its moments.

 

[IntoPhagist]

Empiricism > Quintessence

 

[The Butt]

I can't bring myself to bash Vintersorg, I love what he does overall (that's not to say he's perfect though). Solens Rotter was a good return to form.

Solens Rotter is the only solo Vintersorg album Ive heard and it is good. I enjoy it thoroughly, front to back... there are a bunch of memorable moments throughout, and I just keep wanting to listen to it again. If I were to assign it a number scale out of 10 itd probably reach up to an 8.

 

[Kthulhu]

Vintersorg's Cosmic Genesis is really epic on vocals. I dunno what happened when he joined Borknagar, but until 2000 his voice was great so far.

 

[Einherjar86]

Empiricism > Quintessence

That, however, is not true; but then again, why would it be?

 

[Hubster]

Vintersorg's problem in recent years is that he abuses usage of upper registers when he sings. It sounds like wailing, and is thinner, and he needs to stay away from it. He's shown this 'abuse' in recent Borknagar records

His strength is his middle and lower registers, the timbre of his voice really shines through:

Lower registers example: "Painting Without Colours" off his first Waterclime album;

Middle registers example: "Spegelsfären" from his Visions From The Spiral Generator album;

 

[Vitor]

Why? it's supposed the bands make music for themselves, to develop/explore their own artistic tastes. A main problem is on the fans too, since they don't evolve at the same time with the band. It's something quite common to hear : bah, just their first(s) album (s) is/are great, the rest is shit. Obviously, the first works are the primal vision of the musicians, the root of their idea of the music they want to make, but as they get better musicians and explore other styles or just their lifes change, that affects directly to their art. That kind of new influences/changes are rarely understood by their fans as a whole and they divide on the usual old/new fans, unless the fans themselves pass thru some similar experiences and then they can understand what's going on.

Some bands 'return to the roots' just to sell albums/gigs, more than their real desire to make what they always liked.

About Borknagar, I blame the production, specially on Empiricism and Epic. The latter is really fast and agressive on the paper, but it sounds light and more like a 70's prog rock than a black metal release. I'm sure if those albums would be re-recorded with a rawer production, they could be considered at least decent. From their 4 first albums, just TAC features a clean/crisp production, but they had Vortex there doing mainly epic clean vocals and still had Grim on drums to make the album heavy/epic enough to be enjoyed highly.

i'm sorry, maybe i've expressed not so well. although i'm not a fan of anyone, so i can't say what i'd said, but all that i can say is that i don't give a shit if a musician wants to explore another styles, seriously, i don't give a shit, i just wanna hear what is good to me, and it means that if Bruce Dickinson now is a rapper and wanna bring it to Iron Maiden, i won't buy it. All the bands got some patterns that can't be ignored, and i'm not saying that a musician can't explore your skills, yes, they can, but they'll be sure that everybody will forget them.

Fans of a musician follow the musician, fans of art follow the art, and i'm not the first option.

 

[IntoPhagist]

I think it is true, Quintessence doesn't impress me much, I'm not the biggest fan of Vortex's Pirate vocals and Songs like Gods of My World, Stellar Dome, Genuine Pulse are my favorite Borknagar songs.

 

[Cythraul]

I fucking hate Vintersorg.

 

[Hubster]

^ To pay respect to your comment, I'm now thrashing Till Fjalls. What a fucking great record

 

[Jean-Pierre]

YES to Zephyrus. That Vintersorg guy is LAME on innumerable levels, one of the most whiffleball, go-through-the-motions Scandanavian post-black metal "artists" out there. Not worthy to pick the corn out of Czral, Garm or even Dan Swano's shit. Nothing progressive about completely generic studio dreck that sounds like all other so called "progressive" efforts. Wankfests =/= progressive, sorry.

EDIT
I like Molested and the first Borknagar. The rest of the catalog rapidly evolves from boring to unlistenable.

 

[Pitiless Wanderer]

I listened to the first record yesterday. Forgot how good it really is. Killer stuff IMO.

 

[Einherjar86]

I like The Olden Domain better than their debut, but they're both awesome albums. Garm just kills on vocals.