Before we get going on this album, I feel I should point out that the press blurb for this album caused some consternation when it appeared on the weekly press email, so I’m going to insert it below:
“Melodic Death, Black Metal, Folk. with their 3rd album „Freiweitn“, Austrian VINSTA raise their Alpine Metal to a new musical level. If you can imagine the prog and melodic Death-Metal side of Opeth with the mysticism of German Black Metal legends Lunar Aurora, mixed with lyrics sung in regional Austrian dialect (and some yodelling even) you get a sense of VINSTA`s unique take on extreme metal.”
Can you see the word that caused it?
Talk about words that you don’t expect to crop up in a metal press blurb. Now, when faced with the description of Vinsta as seen above, most people will have one of two extreme reactions: feign ignorance and pretend said album doesn’t exist, or immediately reply saying “ooh, can I have that one?”. Now, just for clarity: it would appear pretty much the entire Ave Noctum team is entirely of the former persuasion, but someone’s got to review the Opethesque proggy death + Austrian yodelling, and oh look, another odd album has mysteriously arrived on my hard drive.
I feel like it’s taken a little bit longer than I expected, but as of this album I think I am now firmly embedded as AN’s resident connoisseur of the weird, unexpected and – just occasionally – the batshit insane. Frankly a bit of yodelling doesn’t rank particularly high on my own personal oddity meter, but I’m going into this review very aware that I’m probably in the minority on that one, and that this is likely going to be a fairly hard sell to most people. Which can be the way with things that make a band really stand out from the crowd; I mean yes, people are more likely to notice and talk about you, but how many of those people are actually going to explore what you’re doing beyond the initial “huh, that’s weird”?
Based on the reaction from the rest of the team, I have to assume that there’s a fair proportion of people out there who will encounter “yodelling” and not go further, which is frankly a shame, because they’ll miss out on an album that is at least three things: actually pretty good, very listenable, and nowhere near as weird as the description at the beginning makes it sound. Mainly because you know that mental image you’ve got of a fairly stolid old woman making peculiar noises on a hilltop? Yeah, that’s not what Vinsta mean by yodelling. It’s closer to the yoiking that Korpiklaani did on Korven Kuningas, but frankly even that oversells it somewhat – I’m pretty sure you could listen to this album completely out of context and not actually realise that there’s yodelling involved. I’m currently on what is roughly my sixth run-through, and there’s so much gauzy, ethereal vocal work on here – none of which is a million miles away from various forms of yodelling – that I can’t honestly say with 100% certainty that I know where the yodelling is. If you’re familiar with the vague, vowel-heavy, harmonic vocals you tend to find in post-metal (Alcest, amongst many others), you’ll be absolutely fine.
So, that’s the proverbial elephant out of the way, and yes, I know it’s a big one. But there’s a lot of other things going on here, not least a frankly impressive number of genres lurking under the skin of what, on first listen, actually sounds a lot like a fairly pretty, atmospheric, vaguely posty album. In the briefest possible terms, there aren’t many albums out there that manage to combine musical touchstones as diverse as dreamy post, acoustic folk, proggy meandering, Cookie Monster™ vocals, power-ish guitar solos, black metal influences and the aforementioned yodelling, and emerge as anything more than a confused and confusing mess. And yet, it’s anything but. It’s certainly not what I was expecting from a folk-turned-proggy-death outfit, but in the best possible way.
To start off, instrumental intros seem to be having a bit of a moment, if the albums I’ve reviewed so far this year are anything to go by, and Steanklong is fairly standard as they go. Sets the scene nicely, but is otherwise unremarkable. Next, Schwoaze Låckn soars out of the gate with heavy God Is An Astronaut vibes, folky strings and vocals, and deathy vocals that kick in – a touch unexpectedly it must be said – about halfway through the 9 minute runtime. Also, the delicate shimmering interlude at the end of this track sounds like it should be playing over the unfolding of a magical forest scene in a film, which I don’t see as a bad thing, but your mileage may vary. The folky vibes continue with the title track, Freiweitn, which evokes the likes of Tenhi – ethereal and dreamy folk, but with a subtle melancholic, deathy darkness hiding amongst the chords and the mournful strings. The intertwined male and female voices in particular here are stunning, and worth listening out for in their own right. Wundaberg marches at you straight off, with tight, pounding riffs that somehow manage to be soaring and martial, with a slightly sinister minor edge lurking just out of focus. The second half expands into more harsh vocals, followed by more of the harmonic combined vocals that made Freiweitn so special, but distinctive march rumbles on behind all the pretty strings and voices. Enstariche Gstoit continues in a similar vein, with a superb melodic section at the end that’s among the highlights of this album. Untawegs Im Schattn slips into soft folk that sounds more like a pure folk, long past version of Vinsta, until it drifts off into prog rock territory just past the halfway point. Just as you’ve relaxed into that one, Vinsta Valonga comes at you with straight up melodic death, with the folky elements still present, but taking a back seat. Einkehr is very much the odd one out, with its piano, strings and focus purely on atmosphere and emotions (I don’t dislike it, but it sounds somewhat out of place), and then Hoamat refers back to the title track both musically and lyrically, with some hammer dulcimer work that sounds like A Forest of Stars trying their hand at folk metal.
So there you have it, there’s a lot going on in this album. The obvious comparison is to Opeth as per the band themselves, but there are other influences and comparisons here that include, but are not limited to: Lumsk (as reviewed by yours truly back in May), a very particular type of soaring post-rock that I know best through God Is An Astronaut and any number of melodeath/proggy outfits you care to think of. I was even reminded of Orphaned Land in some of the heavier folk passages. Other folk passages could almost be the weirder, creepier, more acoustic end of Steeleye Span, which is not a sentence I ever expected to write in a metal review. One influence that, if I’m honest, I can’t find in Freiweitn is black metal – it’s missing the searing bleakness of black metal, the brittle production values, and even the harsh vocals are – to my mind – far more death than black. Not that that’s a bad thing – the vocals fit perfectly with the musical house of cards that Vinsta have assembled here, and I’m not sure they would if they veered much more towards the guttural howls that black tends to go in for.
Much like an actual house of cards, combining the disparate elements found on this album takes a lot of skill and understanding of the inner workings of what you’re doing, that Vinsta clearly have in spades, but it is a delicate balance. If you don’t quite commit enough, you end up with a confused album that isn’t clear what it wants to be, but also if you stray too far from the exact combination that works, you run the risk of it all coming down on top of you and being an incoherent mess. Vinsta, for the most part, build their house of cards very, very carefully, and play with it just enough to be interesting, but never quite enough for it to all come crashing down. There’s a few shaky moments – Einkehr sounds like it’s from a different album entirely, and there are a few brief points in other tracks where the balance is slightly out, but overall it’s a very accomplished blend of dark, slightly sinister proggy death, with delicate, ethereal folk and some truly gorgeous vocals. Just don’t be put off by the yodelling, because there’s far more to Vinsta than that, and you’ll be missing out on an absolutely gorgeous album.
(9/10 Ellie)
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