Wintersun The Forest Seasons (2017) [japanese Ed.] 2cd

The Forest Seasons is the third studio album by Finnish heavy metal band Wintersun. The band cited Antonio Vivaldi's violin concerto The Four Seasons as an inspiration for the album title. After 5 years - WINTERSUN return with their 3rd studio album entitled The Forest Seasons. It's release is accompanied by a massive crowdfunding campaign the band set up to finance their planned WINTERSUN headquarters. Mixed and mastered by the band themselves, The Forest Seasons invites the audience to embark on a musical journey through a mystical forest with it's 4 colossal tracks and a total running time of 54 minutes + bonus track. Additionally, there is a live album, recorded at Tuska Open Air 2013. Japanese Limited Edition 2CD Mediabook.

Much like the sword-wielding Norseman depicted on its front sleeve, the eponymous debut album from Ensiferum unexpectedly invaded the new millennium's budding Viking metal landscape, speedily conquered the loyalties of unsuspecting listeners, and proceeded to set up a permanent settlement within the hearts of many devoted metal fans of all stripes. The strategy for this wholesale takeover was really quite simple, as the Finnish band obviously took stock of the broad inspirational foundations laid down by Sweden's pioneering Bathory before matching them with the more readily accessible songcraft perfected by countrymen Amorphis (while wisely subtracting Finntroll's goofy polka rhythms), to achieve a finely balanced and damn near irresistible Viking folk-metal formula.

A half-decade's worth of inconsistent activities amid occasional demo recordings gave little indication that the members of Ensiferum (which comes from the Latin words for "sword bearer") would ever give up their multiple alternate projects long enough to create this self-titled debut. And yet, by the time it finally did arrive in 2001, said album delivered with such astonishingly high songwriting and production standards – not to mention a particularly well-developed thematic vision – that its dynamic contrasts of extreme and more commercial heavy metal elements instantaneously vaulted Ensiferum to the front of the Viking folk-metal class.

Wintersun is the 2004 self-titled debut studio album by heavy metal band Wintersun, then the solo project of Jari Mäenpää. The style presented is somewhat of a departure from the more folk metal-oriented sound of Ensiferum, of which Mäenpää was previously a member. Instead, Wintersun explores power metal, melodic death metal, and symphonic black metal sensibilities. This is surely one of the greatest albums not only in 2004, and definitely deserves a place among the greatest.

Over the course of eight years the band have taken both music and visuals to yet another level and while listening to their new effort you´ll be taken on a journey through the doors of time, a journey beyond the stars, beyond the birth of the worlds to an infinite universe. Epic Metal that breaks through the boundaries not only of music, but the universe! The main goal was to make an album that would be really astonishing to listen to, because the concept of time itself is simply just that: astonishing, overwhelming, staggering.