Voice Of Winter
“Childhood Of Evil”
2016
(where’s the foundation?)
Voice of Winter, the progressive metal act from Dijon-Burgundy, France with their sophomore, full length album entitled “Childhood Of Evil” is the band’s second under the M.U.S.I.C. records flagship. With only their 2013 album “Devil Eats My Parts” along with a strewn of EP’s and demos.
Right off the bat, we have “View From Sedna”. Starts off with a great driving riff that gets faster and faster until suddenly…an overly distorted jazz riff that completely derails the momentum the previous riff generated. This is pretty much the story of this whole album: entire songs where all these great individual riffs converge together to, somehow, make an unintelligible mess and tried to pass it off as “Progressive”. If you were to dissect each song’s individual riffs and separate them, each one would be amazing to listen to. But they’re all just sort of slapped together with no concern for song structure or fluidity, that it becomes near impossible to notice how good the music actually is while you’re listening. There are many immediately apparent influences with their writing from bands like Death, Cradle Of Filth, and Emperor. This is especially apparent on tracks like “Liberticide”, “Ladies”, and the title track “Childhood Of Evil.”. That’s not to say that there aren’t any redeeming qualities here. The bass playing here was spectacular and really helped carry the songs along and keep them at least mildly interesting (but again…no song structure). The drums were solid and felt very raw which fit the atmosphere of the heavy black metal influence throughout. And again, the riffs by themselves in all these songs are really great…just not back-to-back the way they’ve done here. And therein lies my biggest disappointment; if the riffs had just been rearranged in a different way that made sense for the songs as a whole, I genuinely feel like this would be a contender for a 9/10 rating…but that isn’t the case here.
I don’t feel like I’ve benefited from listening to this album, save for a few great riffs sprinkled throughout the album and some tremendous bass playing keeping this on the rails. This whole experience feels like something someone would listen to if they wanted to torture themselves to see if they can still feel anything. Overall, this album has its moments, but that doesn’t wash away the frustration of what might have been if they had taken the time to organize their riffs better.
Tracklist:
1. View From Sedna
2. Ladies
3. Liberticide
4. Chrome
5. Childhood Of Evil
6. Damocles
7. Lords Of Whores
https://www.facebook.com/vow.page
Members:
Etienne Hetzel – Guitars/Chant
Fabrice Letang – Bass
Erwann Loezic – Drums/Choirs
Rating: 4 out of 10
~Deaf Guardian