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Everfrost: Winterider
Everfrost - Winterider Music Review

Everfrost: Winterider

Melodic Heavy/Power Metal
3.5/5.0

Hailing from chilly Lapland Finland, fantasy metal band Everfrost returns with their second studio album, Winterider. A first for the band, the album is concept album and will come with a complete manga comic. The band explains: "The story will feature characters from their debut album Blue Eyed Emotion, and will take them on a desperate journey to survive a never-ending winter." (Principal songwriter and keyboard player Benji Connelly kinda looks like manga character.)

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Everfrost

Though I've never heard Everfrost before, their music is easily recognizable: traditional European melodic heavy/power metal. With a keyboard player penning most of the songs you would expect a large portion of the song arrangements to revolve around him, and you would be correct. Besides providing ambience and atmosphere, including a symphonic layer, Connelly freely peppers the tunes with key solos. The next notable nuance is the large vocal arrangements. Vocalist Mikael Salo is backed up by strong choral and gang vocal harmony. After these things, you'll find their power metal not only to be spry and speedy, but also filled with significant rock groove. In the end, Everfrost's music is derivative and predictable, but also quite entertaining.

Exploring a few songs, you'll find Everfrost delivering power metal rock with Winterider, Juhannus In January, and Brandy And Antifreeze, all having deliberate synth solos. There are guitar solos, but often in tandem with the synths. But Markus Laito gets a better chance to rip up his fret board within Chainlace Angel. Early within Actraiser, you'll find the bass line rising to drive the power metal rock groove. With A Whisper In A Frozen Tale, Everfrost delivers a dramatic 15 minute symphonic power metal epic with Connelly's keyboards at the epicenter. All said, if you like your melodic power metal heavily synth saturated, you will enjoy Everfrost's Winterider. Recommended.


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The Bottom Line

If you like your melodic power metal heavily synth saturated, you will enjoy Everfrost's Winterider. Recommended.

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