A creative journey through adversities and obstacles personified through the elements of the earth, and sinister internal forces the imminent wrath of which is unleashed to test your will to get to the end. To claim your Emerald. The main theme is obtaining self-completion, making it by experiencing self-awareness and spiritual elevation by facing the good, the ugly and the evil that is inside us, the bag of Aeolus that is buried in each of our souls. With an album that is intelligently full of melodic intricacies, controversies, paganistic atmosphere and metal weight, it also has vision and pours insight into the sweaty strenuous processes of creation, having to the go through its 40 waves with you being at Those Winds mercy.
Rubin’s intro is a march of thunder bearing clouds with a volume and force that sets the mood for this album. It’s high powered with beautiful atmospheric metal instrumentations, riffs and melodies. The choir adds a tone of ethereal innovation and the breakdowns allude to the movement of the sea. It describes a stifled existence, with the seeds of despair brewing determination for salvation. In Flesh and Bones the sea and the sky conspire for a storm in this high tempo sinister track. It’s about embarking upon a journey, filled with disturbing excitement. The Poet of Gold is Stonebringer’s moment of truth; where impatient greedy souls must be striped, getting a glimpse into all their internal demons summoned by the Poet. The melodies here interchange in between Heperotic (or continental) Greek folklore bursts and post metal phases, and a bridge of brutal vocals amidst the rest that are melodic lines all together work so well, it’s uncanny. This track manifests the diversity of Stonebringer that perform quite technically challenging compositions, that, combined with the speed at which the tracks are executed, is a testament to the overall value of this album.
The bands’ homonymous track Stonebringer keeps the listener intently engaged with a beautiful instrumental part in the middle that builds up to a solo that is followed by a prelude of brutal tease before the culmination of a heavy breakdown that closes the track. The stone represents the fragileness of hope and accepting your fate and gaining will through humility. Pan was the first track the band released to give people a taste of what to expect from Those Winds. He is a treacherous one searching for your darkest needs, your guilty indulgences, your weaknesses, needing you “hollow” before he sings for you. The hero must rise to the occasion “above this space” of worldly pleasures but heroes are made in hell; there is a quest at hand, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the human sense, consciously sacrificing while facing the adversities that fate has in store. The intro is folkloric once more, a tribute to Pan, and the choir integration like in Rubin, combined with truly heavy riffs and an astral solo at 4.20 makes this song purely riveting.
The Dead Kid’s Blues has an interesting intro, it gives the sense that music is being played far away and the sound receptor is drawing near the source that is the distraught setting of debasement and humiliation. Utterly alone under a pitch black sky, stripped of any desires, of reason, of will, going through a personal struggle to give into the “doom”, to surrender to your demons, until the day of benign clarity when one of the roads finally picks you and you’re filled with a peculiar sense of futile confidence to play the Dead Kid’s Blues even if the sun don’t rise. And instead of the sun, comes Vrahnas; paganistic chants open a world of pain as Vrahnas comes at you with all his might. The main riff here is like a turbine of sound energy consuming sound space, paving the way into an eerie interlude before returning back to the main riff that has been reinvented, changing the tone. What follows is the penultimate track, Depression (Offered to carry us), one of the heaviest on Those Winds, conveying the peak of despair when the need to give in weighs more than the will to endure. It is diverse; from acoustic sections with harmonized vocals, to the choir colouring the background at times, in between the typical high tempo’d interchanging riffs and vocal lines, with ample instrumental breaks followed by stone breaking aggressive instances and down tempo atmospheric sections. Stonebringer have consolidated a demanding style of their own with this musical sound ingenuity and the production rendering enhances this effort fully. The final track is the Emerald, which I find very poignant with respect to the fact that Rubin is the opening track. Emerald is the point of salvation, the light at the end of the tunnel of self-searching, where you are still struggling but, your quest, your Emerald is within reach for your taking.
Those Winds is not a concept album in so much that it follows through a story to tell; it is a concept album in the sense that there is an overall concept in the theme of self-fulfillment. Combining the interesting compositions that incorporate classical and traditional music inspirations together with demanding technical execution and the overall changes in atmosphere makes Those Winds a true gem for the local scene, and a diamond in the rough for unsuspecting audiences abroad. Seriously recommended for those who want something to blast your eardrums, and send chills down your spine, and for those who like their metal provocative, clever, and with a twist.
Stonebringer are opening for Opeth in Thessaloniki on 21/03/15, and will play a live gig on 28/03/15 Six D.o.g.s for the release of Those Winds event info:
https://www.facebook.com/events/848335245209753/
Band and Album info: http://stonebringer.bandcamp.com/
Helen Marie Joyce 