Winter Storm are a fairly new gothic metal band. And as is common these days, they are female-fronted. However, they do not come from Netherlands or Finland, but from West Midlands of England. 'Within the Frozen Design' is the band's sophomore full-length album after the debut 'Serenity In Darkness', which came out in 2010.

Winter Storm (WS from now on) do have a lot of English gothic/doom metal in their music, whether it's about riffs or melodies. There's some Paradise Lost kind of vibe to it (more gothic eras), as well as Entwined-style darkness and hopelessness. Then there are clear After Forever and Lacuna Coil linkages. For the first try 'Dark Awakening', and 'Afraid to Speak' for the latter.

WS sound rather massive, dark and dramatic. They actually do have quite individual touch on their, both guitar and singing, melodies. The guitar work consists of heavy metal and more modern-sounding blunt riffing, plus some far lively lead guitar parts. Add to that a lot of swooping synthesizer playing with boring preset string and choir sounds, and drum machine beats (or then heavily triggered to cause it sound like a drum machine, but I'd bet it's a machine) in comparatively same tempo for a big part, and we got a 55 minutes worth of music that does not go much anywhere. Why? The songs are simplistic, having just a few parts each, and the majority being in the same strain. Then they have these more upbeat (not very upbeat in this context) gothic rockers, such as 'Symmetric Flow' and 'The Frozen Siren'.

Hannah Fieldhouse, who is the vocalist as well as the lead guitarist, has a very dark and characteristic voice. I'm sure I've never before heard anything quite like her's. She has some classical singer traits, but sadly the register is only marginal. She uses some heavy vibration, too. Her restricted voice added to the dark music, which doesn't have much of variety, makes it all sound more flat and dull. I still accuse the compositions, rather than the vocals. This is a concept album telling a story a a person who thinks he's designing his own universe, but finds out that he's got no control of it. The lyrics are far more bland as the story is, though. And those flying islands on the cover artwork... Very prog indeed, but that's not the thing with the music.

The album is self-produced, but still sounds similar to some label released material. The machinelike drums and typical synthesizer sounds make a lot of harm for the overall sound, but meaty guitars and bass save a lot. The guitars vary from boxy to open-stringed playing, and to non-distorted (now doesn't that beginning of 'Beneath the Mystery' sound like Metallica's 'The Call of Ktulu', eh?!). The bass is rubbery and slapping, but still sturdy and what's more important, it's distinguishable in the mix. The The album was mixed well enough, so that every element has its space.

This album leaves me cold for sounding too much of same and same, and that goes for the music too. The band should try and incorporate other things into their music. No, they must go on and be more adventurous!

Rating: 4 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
01/25/2014 23:08