Are you ready for some Cold-Blooded American Pagan Metal? That’s what Winterhymn calls their music and it does have different feeling to it than your general folk metal band. Winterhymn infuse clean vocals with growls and a wide range of instruments. Making it a great mix between genres such as black, death and power metal. One band that instantly comes to mind as a reference point to meld this genres well is Eluveitie.

The debut Songs for the Slain was released in 2011 with Blood & Shadow being Winterhymn’s follow-up after a lot of touring with known acts such as Children of Bodom, Eluveitie, Turisas and Korpiklaani. Since the debut a lot has changed in the lineup with half the band (Warg, Sieven and Ulfr) leaving to form Siegelord in 2013. That hasn’t stopped Winterhymn’s quest for conquest though as this has in all honesty spawned two good bands with a different approach to music (Siegelord plays melodic death metal). More on Siegelord in a future blog post.

Exura (keyboards), Umbriel (violin) and Draug (vocals, guitars) have their best performance yet with the three new recruits in Alvadar (bass, backing vocals), Valthrun (drums) and Varrik (guitars) making sure the change of members isn’t slowing the band down as they are on point. Blood & Shadow is full with great hymns like Seafarer, speedy power metal tunes such as Blood of the Moon and black folk Silenced by the Northern Winds. There is something for everyone on Blood & Shadow that wants an epic tale. Definitely an album I will go back to several times to find myself getting a new favorite song each and every time.

Winterhymn’s Blood & Shadow is out now by SoundAge Productions.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Winterhymn

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/winterhymn

For fans of: Eluveitie and Arkona

Favorite song: Seafarer