Album Review - Vintersorg - Cosmic Genesis

This album has really grown on me since I wrote the first review some time ago. Because of this I've decided to make a small update of the review.

Cosmic Genesis is the third full length album from the Swedish metal band Vintersorg. Vintersorg was a one-man band for a long time, but now the band consists of Vintersorg (vocals, bass, acoustic and tremolo guitars, keyboards and programming) and Mattias Marklund (lead and rhythm guitar).

It would be a huge mistake to blindly categorize this beautiful music as black metal. Actually it is quite difficult to categorize this style of music at all - you can't always label music and put it in small boxes. This certainly seems to be the case with Vintersorg. The music has elements of folk, melodic black, power, progressive and it all seems to be glued together with a touch of divine intervention. Vintersorg use the best things from the mentioned genres and creates a new and very innovative sound. The vocals are a mix of folk-like clean vocals and the traditional screaming black metal vocals. These work surprisingly well together - they create a sort of reciprocal action. The contrast in the two vocal styles is also reflected in the general Vintersorg sound - Vintersorg play around with enchanting mid tempo parts and fast and aggressive parts.

The lyrics are very beautiful, aesthetic and well written. They are about themes as cosmos, science, philosophy, and the big questions in the universe. Vintersorg's fascination of these themes is a nice welcome in a time where boring lyrics are mass produced. Persons as Aleister Crowley, Stephen Hawking and Tor Nørretranders are thanked in the cover of the album.

Algol is one of the harder tracks on the album - the song is full of passion and inventiveness. The power of this song is hard to grasp. The title number Cosmic genesis is indeed one of the pearls of the album. It begins with a very cool and moody keyboard intro, followed by a by a nice guitar riff. The song starts out with the clean vocals, and the refrain is a real sing-along. Later in the song the black vocals take over, creating a great counterbalance to the clean style kept so far. The next song is called Om regnbågen materialiserades ("If the rainbow should materialize"), and its lyrics are in Swedish - it has a pretty cool guitar solo in the end. Ars memorativa is a fast and powerful song, where Vintersorg really shows what a technical genius he is. This is one of my absolute favorite Vintersorg songs. If the title Rainbow demon seems familiar it is because it is a Uriah Heep cover song - it is pretty cool, but it is not the best on the album.

Naturens Galleri ("The nature's gallery") is another favorite of mine. It is a simple and positive song yet very powerful and expressive - also here the lyrics are in Swedish. Only the clean vocals are used in this song, and the overall style is very similar to power metal. This song is highly recommendable. The last song is called The enigmatic spirit and it is a very sad song. It is completely down to earth, and has no black vocals in it. It shows Vintersorg master many different things.

This album is recommendable to anyone, even if you are not a black metal fan - the album has so much more to offer. Vintersorg breaks down some of the barriers separating the popular metal genres. Cosmic Genesis is not the best Vintersorg album, but it is still an aesthetic and mind bubbling album that you can't afford to miss.

Best Songs: Naturens galleri, Cosmic genesis

Written by Anders
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
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Ratings

Anders: 9/10

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