ALBUM REVIEW: Warfront – Wind Rose
When you think about it, WIND ROSE’s gimmick shouldn’t work. By all logic, a ‘Dwarven metal band’ theme falls apart as soon as people realise they’re, you know, regular-sized guys. Thankfully though, metalheads are generally quite good at suspending disbelief and WIND ROSE have survived long enough to deliver their fifth album. It’s a belter too; Warfront is good old-fashioned power metal, full of cinematic flourishes, hearty choruses and fist-clenching anthems. They may be best known for their viral cover of Diggy Diggy Hole, but there’s many more pages in the Book Of Grudges and WIND ROSE have some mighty tales to tell.
What makes it work is that WIND ROSE completely embrace their aesthetic. This isn’t a half-hearted album getting by on tongue-in-cheek humour and knowing winks at the audience; it’s full-blooded war music. WIND ROSE are a bit silly, but they take their silliness very seriously. They could have chosen to coast by on their theme, but each of these songs is a well-crafted mini-epic full of excellent musicianship. They’d be a great band even if they didn’t have trouble finding chain mail that fits.
Fellows Of The Hammer for instance is six minutes of ancestor-worshipping, ale-raising glory. Led by the charismatic vocals of Francesco Cavalieri, it’s a foot-stomping war anthem with plenty of folk metal flourishes thrown in. Close your eyes while listening to it and you’ll see the mountains of New Zealand fly past.
Together We Rise is perfect for rallying the Longbeards to war, while Army Of Stone is a textbook example of how to write a great power metal song. Gates Of Ekrund is an atmospheric, mid-paced stomper, while The Battle Of Five Armies is an ambitious attempt at recreating the climax of The Hobbit in song form. It mostly succeeds and what’s more, it doesn’t have a distracting romance between an Elf archer and a handsome Dwarf either.
These tracks are all very catchy and evocative and while they inevitably get slightly samey, there’s enough variation to keep things entertaining. They get the wheels of imagination turning too; fantasy authors who need help breaking writer’s block will definitely want to check this out.
In short, Warfront is a near-perfect example of 21st century power metal. It never stops being enjoyable and the songs are executed well enough that the Dwarf theme becomes a bonus, rather than a unique selling point. WIND ROSE deserve to be more than an internet sensation; this is a terrific album and exactly what you want playing when Goblin hordes descend on the mine. Or you want a killer metal song to play at the gym, whichever is more likely.
Rating: 8/10
Warfront is set for release on June 10th via Napalm Records.
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Love the review and as a longtime devotee of the bearded persuasion (Dwarves are my prefered fantasy race in games) i appreciate that at least compared to some other review i read, you know your stuff. Cause that reviewer sounded insincere to me by mentioning intergalactic Fantasy and Warhammer 40K about Gates of Ekrund. Granted 40K is a bit more known these days but mixing the original Warhammer to the 40K one would even made the titular character of their dedicated magazine White Dwarf’s beard bristle .