Winter Thrice is uniformly excellent. All individual performances are strong. The songwriting is as strong as it was on Urd as well. So far I especially like "Winter Thrice" and their excellent use of Garm's vocals to add a soulful dimension to the song. Lazare's "Panorama" is also a really nice, more progressive tinged break from Oystein's epics.
I've read at least one review (Angry Metal Guy) faulting the production on the album, and while I don't think the production is bad by any stretch, I do think that it suffers a bit from too much "loudness wars" style compression. As dynamic as the compositions themselves are, most of the songs have only a 5-6 db dynamic range and the guitars themselves seem to suffer from this especially (as you can hear in the bluesier solo on "Noctilucent"). Since Jens Bogren did the final mixes and, I assume, the mastering, and he's usually one of the best at creating loud, compressed mixes that still sound live and dynamic, I have to think that the overall compressed sound is the result of having so many members of the band recording in different locations. Reading the liner notes leads me to believe that a lot of the album was put together remotely in each member's own studio and then assembled together. If that's the case, then Bogren may have been hard pressed to get all of the tracks to sit together well in the final mix.
Whatever the case, though, the recording is clean and all the instruments are well balanced. It's a far cry from sounding like it was recorded in the woods at night and mic'd from the other side of a hill. I just think it would benefit from a slightly more organic sound and some more dynamic range.
I wonder how the vinyl compares?
, I followed a link to Enshine's label, hunting for more info on their upcoming second album. Found out there that Jari Lindholm has another project with a bit more of a doom metal flavor: Exgenesis.
