Pestilence's 'Sphere' made me want to dive into multiverses of metal music. Let's go back to the year 2000: I was lucky to discover Vintersorg when their 'Cosmic Genesis' was released. The subsequent albums saw not total, but pretty big at times, departure from Earthly, folkish atmosphere, and my interest waned towards the band. Yet I had kept 2002's 'Visions from the Spiral Generator' and 'The Focusing Blur' in my collection, but never really plunged into their sonic worlds.
'The Focusing Blur' is the band's second album of something like space/fusion/folk/prog/metal music. I think Mr. Vintersorg's enlistment in Borknagar moulded his visions into this band's direction, and of course towards their newer albums' style. Both of the bands lost their biggest folk influences. 'Prologue Dialogue - The Reason' contains bad dissonant toyish MIDI stuff, which opens the album. A very poor start! I think the band have tried a bit too much to create something out of ordinary, and they might have succeeded in that too, but still the sonics suck. 'The Essence' starts with semi-acoustic way, which harks back to the true soul of Vintersorg, but it soon explodes into a swirling blast. The music on 'The Focusing Blur' is pretty far from catchy and sing-along style of 'Cosmic Genesis', thanks to contorted compositions, sometimes a bit too contorted and deviant for my liking. There surely are those catchy parts herein, but disconnected from each other. Many pieces are only heard once during the album, so this is no background music at all. The fact is, that the songs usually do work, even though they include some carnivale-esque (in a rather Arcturian way) or toyish (sadly some bad MIDI stuff can be heard all over the album, but thankfully there's some better MIDI bits in, too) parts, in both music and vocals, e.g. 'Curtains'. Mr. Vintersorg and his partner Mattias Marklund are for the second time accompanied by fretless bass guru Steve DiGiorgio and drummer Asgeir Mickelson (also in Borknagar), and this of course is a total opposite of lame MIDI. Expect a lot of weird time signatures.
Mr. Vintersorg's vocals are very unique. Sometimes totally admirable and fitting, sometimes a bit eccentric. His pretty high-pitched clean vocals are accompanied by dry-throated growl. He isn't a master singer, but I take individuality over skill this time. "Jestery" vocal bits remind me of Arcturus, but are just laughable in a negative way ('Curtains' rears its ugly head again, it even includes a "carnival music" part like many a Arcturus song). Narrations done by Borknagar's Lars Nedland work fine, sounding very English, unlike badly pronouncing Vintersorg himself. Lyrics are science/science fiction and psychological pondering, and interesting they are too. The music does work best when a listener goes into them. And cover artwork is also a part of experiencing the album fully. Sound-wise this is too bipolar; cheap MIDI vs organic instrument sounds (especially acoustic guitars and snare drum). Everything has its space, but as a whole this is pretty trebly. It's really well mixed, but the outcome sounds too much like toy synthesizer kind of stuff at times.
At heart, Vintersorg are still the same. This is just another extension of the band's style. Although quite a long extension every so often. It is no wonder if the changes were committed, when thinking about how much there is bands that have aped old Vintersorg style, which was folk/viking metal. It's a big possibility, that there is no similar album created, except maybe the previous Vintersorg album, so points for that. This is no every day listen for me, but occasionally it does work. One for fans of weird 'n' warped (metal), this got nought to do with easy-listening music. But universe and human life can be jester-like anyway!
Rating: 7+ (out of 10) ratings explained
Reviewed by Lane
03/25/2008 20:53
