The marketing people at Napalm Records make a huge underestimation when they label Vintersorg’s latest effort, ‘Solens rötter’ (the roots of the sun), Nordic folk metal.
It’s more than that.
It’s black metal, it’s jazz metal, it’s acoustic music blended with distorted. It’s clean vocals and growls in a perfect mixture. It’s folk to the extent that flutes, harps and violins are used too, but otherwise it doesn’t have much of the folk element.

The album represents thinking man’s music for better and for worse, complex and technically perfect as it is. It is perfect, no doubt there.

But the thing is, for a simple person like me, it all gets too technical and complex. To the point where it gets boring.

After the third song, I begin to wonder when this ends, and even though I’ve now fought my way through ‘Solens rötter’ ten times, I still don’t find that it’s swinging with my heartbeat.

I realise and admit entirely that this is down to my narrow-mindedness, but so be it. For all the technical prowess, this just isn’t working.