WINTERSUN, the Finnish band led by former ENSIFERUM singer Jari Mäenpää, has issued the following update:
"It's been over a year since our last update. We are very sorry for that, but there's also a good reason. We have been struggling with the new album [tentatively titled 'Time'] more than enough and the main reason in the last year has been with lots of computer problems. We had to do this album in a way that Jari finishes the album at his home studio, when the drums, bass and rhythm guitars were done at Sonic Pump Studios. We didn't predict how much problems this would bring us more. This is the first time when we work like this and were very too 'green' understanding what it takes from the computer to handle hundreds of audio and midi tracks. For fast and efficient composing of the orchestrations you need lots of horsepower from the computer. It's a must have to get as many VST instruments running realtime as possible. And for this you need lots of RAM, but there's a 4GB limit in 32bit apps, so this has been really painful for Jari. So we are hoping that the change to 64bit era will happen soon, which will put an end to this RAM limit misery. And also with more powerful processors give us the freedom to write and record albums much faster for you!
"Thank god we got Nuclear Blast to help us! We have now a new powerful computer and things seem to work much better now. Also we have to thank a lot our manager Stefan Hattinger from Rock The Nation for being so patient with us and helping all the time! Also we want to thank you fans for being so patient and understanding!
"Last year hasn't really been easy for us, but now there's some light in the end of the tunnel. We will get back to you all as soon as we know more about how things are evolving. We really don't want to disappoint everybody again by promising a release date, because we've seen how it has gone before. But we promise to do our best and get this album done as soon as the conditions let us. We will play at Metalcamp [in Slovenia] in July anyway, but that's the only show we do this summer. We will concentrate finishing the album and then go back on the road."
Songtitles set to appear on "Time" include "Sons of Winter and Stars", "Land of Snow and Sorrow", "Time", "Fire", "One with the Shadows", "Storm" and "Silver Leaves".
The band previously described the upcoming album as containing "seven epic songs and quite long ones. It's a theme album. The music has some new dimensions, but has also the recognizable 'WINTERSUN style.'"
