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WINTERLONG
"Valley of the Lost"
is a very impressive epic, symphonic
power metal album from these
young Scandanavian metal-heads. With catchy churuses, well
written and arranged songs, and impressive
technical playing "Valley
of the Lost" is sure to please fans of
this metal style. Lars Eric Matsson
produced
the album and did an excellent job of
capturing the band at it's best on this recording. Great clarity
with the guitars and vocals, and plenty of pounding drum and
bass sounds.
"Valley of the Lost"
features a lot of extended jamming and some
powerful vocals courtesy of HUSSNI
MORSARE, who also handles his fair share of the
rhythm guitar work. The band does a nice job with the backing
vocals and chanting giving the album a large, full sound.
THORBJORN ENGLUND blazes
on lead guitar with some fantastically fluid soloing and speedy
riffs. He definitely has refined his chops and puts on a dynamic
6 string display...obviously influenced by great virtuoso
metal guitarists such as Matsson
and Yngwie
Malmsteen. The drumming of TONI
ERKKILA is equally impressive. ERKKILA
rages behind the drum kit and bashes away in fine-tuned precision
with bassist ERIK TOMBERG and
the rest of the band.
WINTERLONG
has their own unique sound, but are similar in many ways to
a lot of the good European power metal bands that are out
there, especially Stratovarius.
The tracks that stood out most were: 'From
heaven to hell', 'Winterlong',
and 'Valley of the lost'.
All were very powerful and well performed songs. The entire
album is packed with high speed power metal tracks. The only
songs that break the trend are track 8, 'Victory'
(but this is only briefly for the instrumental song intro
then it rages ahead as another powerful metal track) and track
10, 'Driven by insanity',
which is the band's short symphonic ballad.
Overall WINTERLONG
"Valley of the Lost",
is a very solid metal effort. All of the tracks were very
good and the vocals were certainly above average. None of
the tracks blew me away, but none were duds either. WINTERLONG
is definitely worth a listen and they really have the potential
to be a very successful band. Give 'em a listen!
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