Evoking Winds - The Heroes - Album Review - Symphonic Medieval Folk Metal from Minsk, Belarus
Today I am writing about the promising symphonic medieval folk metal band, Evoking Winds, from Minsk, Belarus, this time with their latest studio release, The Heroes.
The Heroes (Inspired by the music of Paul Anthony Romero, with the composer’s permission)
Created and distributed as our fan art and with great respect to @PAULanthonyROMERO, Rob King and Steve Baca, the original soundtrack authors.
Today is the first time in my life I am listening to a folk metal album for two days in a row, and that album is, The Heroes, belongs to a Belarusian collective, Evoking Winds. I have first introduced to this band about a year ago with their debut studio album, Towards Homestead, which had totally different approach than The Heroes, yet left me with a positive impression. The Heroes, in this way, is not only one of the best folk metal but one of the most successful metal albums I listened to lately.
The album concept has influences from the gaming world where I personally was heavily involved as well. The album theme has similarities with worldwide known franchises such as Lord of the Rings, also reminded me of Jeremy Soule's Skyrim and the Medieval Total War series of Jeff Van Dyck. It is truly fascinating to hear how well the album captured all these familiar influences, pulling the listener into its fantasy world for some time from start to finish.
Unlike other folk metal music out there, The Heroes album doesn't have a focus on metal, rather metal elements accompany the entire project. I remember hearing influences from symphonic death and black metal, mainly contributing to the overall tension level in the story. It was hard to talk about the instrumentation cause the music works together as a whole if you know what I mean. They just can't be separated. But what stayed with me about the metal part was that the performances were quite technical and solid, wanted to hear them with more presence from time to time.
The general understanding here has movie/video game soundtrack form with a familiar concept, like it actually belongs to an Elven movie. I am sure there will be people who'll get surprised by the fact that this album doesn't have a video game or movie. I believe it has the potential to represent stories, specifically in fiction/medieval where you find yourself in an open world like the Bethesda series; Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, or others such as Gothic, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, etc.
Musicality is one of the strengths that impressed me the most. The orchestration is quite mind-blowing when you think about the entire work and its vision. I am listening to instrumental music projects very often but always end up thinking that it wasn't good enough to keep my attention fresh until the end. The Heroes, in this way, separated Evoking Winds from others in the same genre by a mile.
On the other side of the coin, projects such as Evoking Winds truly deserve respect for their approach; they only talk through music. Avoiding almost everything connected to visual media, and focusing on the music unlike the %99 of the industry artists. It got me thinking though, if there are still enough of us out there who appreciate and support people like them.
When I put all these into account, I'd like to say that I had a great time listening to The Heroes album, which reminded me of Iced Earth - Horror Show with its horror metal influence, Jeremy Soule - Skyrim with its soundtrack form, and Nightwish with its folk metal theme. No Time to Hesitate earned its place in Metalhead Community's Monsters of Metal Underground playlist on Spotify. Thanks for reading.
Evoking Winds is a completely non-commercial project. If you see any purchase request on Bandcamp or any other payment gate - this is not intended by us and might be related to the free downloads monthly limitations.
Sergei Shulzhenko - Keys, Orchestration @Alia Fay - Flutes, Vocals, Magic Yaraslau Karotkin - Bass Alexander Cherepanov - Guitars, Drums Artyom Prishchepov - Arrangement, Ambient
© ℗ 2019 Artyom Prishchepov, with the composer’s permission © 1999 Paul Anthony Romero, original OST composer
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Listen to Metalhead Community's Monsters of Metal Underground playlist on Spotify
