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- Band:
Svart Vinter - Duration: 00:41:11
- Available from: 30/05/2025
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Gelid, melancholic, impetuous: the list of adjectives could also continue but we leave the listener the choice to grasp its emotion while listening to the present “Isvind”, second test on the long distance of the Svart Vinter, a Roman reality dedicated to an atmospheric black metal that founds its roots in the Scandinavian black metal, with particular predilection for the Norwegian one.
However, we do not reduce the work of the Lazio quintet to the simple, albeit dutiful, referring to Northeurous colleagues: the ability to enrich a proposal that is certainly already developed far and wide from the 90s to today, by clearsed the effect of a obvious scope, was the real challenge undertaken and completed with more than positive results from the Capitoline band.
Guided by the couple Luca Gagnoni and Emanuela Marino (both guitarists), already in action with the parallel project Doom/Death of the Veil of Conspiracy, the Svart Vinter arrive at the second chapter in the career after the debut of three years ago by “Mist”, darkest and greedy compared to today's publication, characterized instead by a glacial basic melody, capable of marking the balance between And more atmospheric moments, well representing also by the cold simplicity of the black and white image on the cover.
A photographic shot behind which the hand of Andrea Maggioni is hidden, one of the absolute symbols of this new release: in addition to managing the work of mixing and mastering of the disc, Maggioni made himself the protagonist behind the microphone giving voice to the nine episodes of “Isvind”.
Therefore, the relationship between man and nature is the common thread of the entire album: an eternal dialogue between the individual and the world around him, with particular attention to winter and desolate landscapes, excellent sensory postcards in order to unleash personal reflections in music on the existence, melancholy and on the transience of life. This is the goal, perfectly scored, transmitted by songs such as the initial “torment”, structured on a enthralling and domineering rhythmic base, on which a melodically nostalgic line of Riff accompanies the groping attacks in blast-beat, thus opening the vast and dark panorama of introspective emotions.
Quiet and storm also alternate in the subsequent “Frozen Tomb”, in which it is precisely the Scream of Maggioni himself who directs the psychological orchestra of the piece: lashing and cruel but also variable and calibrated, placing himself as snow in our ear pavilions.
The journey to the summit surrounded by the clouds goes hand in hand with the symmetrical descent into the deepest ego, and the result is the title-track, possessed in its transformation from slow litany to a true explosion of anger and abandonment, also marked by an evil and magically morbid orchestral ceremony.
The ability of the Svart Vinter is precisely to give the right weight to the Binomial IRA/Solitude, supporting them – to stay on Scandinavian land – the saddest passages, such as those stuck at the time by Peter Tägtgren and his Hypocrisy: elements further amplified in “ritual”, almost hypnotic and dotted with a magnificent guitar addo in the final part.
As the step becomes uncertain and tiring in the climb, so the questions about our being multiply: that's why “My Last Winter” represents the right soundtrack for this ambivalent discovery, with its whispers to stop the vocal fury, once again the protagonist of the piece.
We are almost at the end of our journey, but a piece is still missing, the real explosion. And this comes with “Of Cold and Grief”, escaped with stubbornness from the black top of that angular mountain, in a sort of free explosion of our most hidden thoughts, leaving the final “Beneath the night's Cold Gaze” the crumbs of a freezing wind – “Isvind” precisely, only mentioned in the white background now lifeless.
The black winter has decided to go down to the capital in all its furious and delicate atmosphere: let yourself be enveloped by cold, now the only constant companion and reflection of the inner torment.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
