Winterfylleth - The Unyielding Season

For those unfamiliar, this band’s signature sound involves headlong surges of clattering blast beats, whiplash velocity, grandiose tremolo and lacerating rasped vocals. Sound familiar? Because on paper it’s a standard blueprint peddled by thousands of aspirant black metal acts. Is this more of the same? Well, no but yes. Winterfylleth have been active for a long time and their recording output is consistency regular with this being their ninth studio release. The Unyielding Season represents no major stylistic departure but it does what has made Winterfylleth become recognised as doyens of their genre – using a tried and test musical template and delivering it brilliantly in a way that not many can match.

Heroes of a Hundred Fields is a barnstorming genre classic and a guaranteed must in Winterfylleth’s live setlists. Six and a half minutes’ of heroic riffing that alternates from fury to sweeping melodious calvary charges. Likewise, A Hollow Existence and the viciously grim Perdition’s Flame is vintage Winterfylleth, atmospheric wrath and melancholic melody with epic cinematic crescendos.

Variation manifests in the slower, rueful victory parade of the title track or the sad, hushed bucolic acoustic plucks of Unspoken Elegy and Where Dreams Once Grew. These are welcome breathers amind the heady, warp speed rampages as well as demonstrations of some musical imagination and dexterity. The album finale is a monumentally impressive cover of Paradise Lost’s epic Enchantment, an ambitious track to cover but pulled off authentically and credibly. The piano outro is a profound way to close off the record.

Black metal or heritage metal has an inbred relationship with cheesiness. Unabashed theatrical, silly tropes come with the territory and you either must accept that unconditionally like an embarrassing family member, or keep your music tastes a dirty secret. Winterfylleth are in a happy place where none of this seems to apply – their sleeve art is, as ever, cool and the music played with such unrelenting conviction and panache, it doesn’t need the pantomime gimmicks to achieve epic vividness. The caustic vocals are delivered with absolute, unrelenting fervour with each syllable and scream is spat with meaning and aggression. Likewise, the percussion is a masterclass in endurance of inexorable blastbeats and pitiless fills. The background use of keyboards adds a lush layering and drama; crucually they are used sparingly rather than overdosed with cheese.  Winterfylleth’s sound is transportive and evocative of a time long before England was ruined by the M1, identikit housing developments on floodplains and evening soap operas that give you a prolapsed soul.  For that alone, you could be grateful but even more so because this album simply smacks.

Here is the bandcamp link: https://winterfylleth.bandcamp.com/album/the-unyielding-season