The old adage is true: Misery does love company, especially when the company is as powerfully talented as the UK post-black metal band who call themselves Vintras. But even listeners who are happily basking in brightness will be gripped by how well Vintras shatter all rose-colored glasses.
The band’s debut album Timescarred will be co-released in late March by Void Wanderer Productions and War Productions. They have presented an eloquent statement about the grim perspectives that inspired the music:
Vintras was born as a conduit for misery and desperation. The reflection of a disintegrating psyche, ebbing and flowing through peaks and troughs of depression, frustration and anger. What has been endured has been channeled into a singular expression beyond the mortal coil, beyond the ordeal, beyond the physical. What was known is no more, now captured as immaterial missive within the flickering of timeless flame.
The vision of the self: a figure desperately fighting against the inevitable slide down the spiral. The realisation that we are all trapped as one: trapped by our past and unable to escape our future. A perpetual existence, wretched and forlorn.
As a concrete expression of this vision, we’re bringing you the album’s opening track, a nearly 10-minute and thoroughly engulfing saga called “In Death’s Dream.” The labels recommend the album for fans of Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Agalloch, Harakiri For The Sky, Panopticon, Altar of Plagues, and Mgła, and you’ll probably understand why when you hear just this one song.
After a short and somber overture, the music strikes with typhoon power and wildfire intensity. The riffing blazes and jolts but also feverishly writhes from within; the drums attack with skull-snapping effect; and the vocals’ unchained intensity is mind-broiling. When the drums shift to a back-beat snap and the heavy bass provides a steadying throb, the sizzling riffage becomes more morose but still penetrates deeply.
Throughout the song, in all its shades and phases, the drums continually seize attention with their variations, as do the dire and depressive hooks within the electrifying riffs, the heft of the bass, and the scorching fury of the vocals.
And although Vintras continue reminding us about the visceral power of the riffs they introduced in the song’s first movements, they also create further changes. They send the music sweeping and soaring, like torment become a storm, but also allow the lead guitar to slowly and sinuously wail in front of a vividly pulsating riff — a solo that’s just as gripping in a different way as everything that’s come before it.
Fires burn, fierce gales blow, and battering rams charge once more, and the music also once again rocks and rings, ascends and sweeps, creating an epic closing statement that also drives all the hooks even deeper.
As dark musical visions go, this one bares its heart in ways guaranteed to get a listener’s blood rushing.
VINTRAS is:
A.A.L – Vocals
R.K.S. – Guitars & Bass
R.S. – Drums
Void Wanderer and War Productions will release Timescarred on March 27th, in CD and digital formats. It’s available for pre-order today.
PRE-ORDER:
https://voidwanderer.com/product/vintras-timescarred-cd/
http://www.war-productions.org
VINTRAS:
https://vintras1.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/vintras1
https://www.instagram.com/vintrasofficial