- Apr 5, 2003
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Winters Bane - Redivivus
Metal Heaven - 00022 - June 30th, 2006
By Brandon Strader
Lou St. Paul doesn't hold back for the introduction of Winters Bane's latest album, Redivivus. No, that wasn't a typo, the album name is really weird. It's actually Latin for "Reborn", a fairly original concept translated from a language rarely used in music, excuse my sarcasm! Try saying it 5 times fast. After a few swirls of guitar arpeggios, the vocalist busts in with his vibrato vocals, seemingly similar to Nils K. Rue at first, but quickly enough evolves into a whole sound of it's own, with the vocalist's more common pronounciation and slight harshness to his voice...
A lot of you may have heard the overwhelming hype over guitarist Lou St. Paul's "guitar mastery" or his "extraordinary" skills with a guitar. This may be somewhat true, but let's be realistic here. A lot of the rhythms are based within powerchords, or powerchord variants. Like Dragonforce, the rhythm section is forsaken and most of the emphasis on the guitar work goes into the solo work. Unlike Dragonforce, the solos and leads really are not THAT impressive. The guitar work is decent at best, and really not extraordinary. The claims of St. Paul being a "guitar hero" may be a bit off base.
Winters Bane's Redivivus is very thrashy in a slower-paced heavy metal type way. A lot of the band's lyrics and imagery deals with various fantasy elements, which we could say is stereotypical of a power group if only these guys had a bit more power and somewhat less heavy metal type thrashing. Possibly the most stand-out track on Redivivus is "Dead Faith" with it's very catchy vocal melody in the chorus. A lot of the sections throughout Redivivus are very bland and uninteresting, though.
6/10
UM's Review Rating Scale
Official Winters Bane Website
Official Metal Heaven Website
Metal Heaven - 00022 - June 30th, 2006
By Brandon Strader
Lou St. Paul doesn't hold back for the introduction of Winters Bane's latest album, Redivivus. No, that wasn't a typo, the album name is really weird. It's actually Latin for "Reborn", a fairly original concept translated from a language rarely used in music, excuse my sarcasm! Try saying it 5 times fast. After a few swirls of guitar arpeggios, the vocalist busts in with his vibrato vocals, seemingly similar to Nils K. Rue at first, but quickly enough evolves into a whole sound of it's own, with the vocalist's more common pronounciation and slight harshness to his voice...
A lot of you may have heard the overwhelming hype over guitarist Lou St. Paul's "guitar mastery" or his "extraordinary" skills with a guitar. This may be somewhat true, but let's be realistic here. A lot of the rhythms are based within powerchords, or powerchord variants. Like Dragonforce, the rhythm section is forsaken and most of the emphasis on the guitar work goes into the solo work. Unlike Dragonforce, the solos and leads really are not THAT impressive. The guitar work is decent at best, and really not extraordinary. The claims of St. Paul being a "guitar hero" may be a bit off base.
Winters Bane's Redivivus is very thrashy in a slower-paced heavy metal type way. A lot of the band's lyrics and imagery deals with various fantasy elements, which we could say is stereotypical of a power group if only these guys had a bit more power and somewhat less heavy metal type thrashing. Possibly the most stand-out track on Redivivus is "Dead Faith" with it's very catchy vocal melody in the chorus. A lot of the sections throughout Redivivus are very bland and uninteresting, though.
6/10
UM's Review Rating Scale
Official Winters Bane Website
Official Metal Heaven Website
