Band:	Borknagar
Album:	Winter Thrice
Style:	Melodic black metal, Progressive black metal
Release date:	January 2016

01. The Rhymes Of The Mountain
02. Winter Thrice
03. Cold Runs The River
04. Panorama
05. When Chaos Calls
06. Erodent
07. Noctilucent
08. Terminus
09. Dominant Winds

Borknagar have spent the last two decades - pardon the cliché - doing their own thing. Never much concerned with publicity or reception of their work, as it appeared, they put out a number of solid releases, played a show or a small tour here and there, and otherwise elegantly avoided the big stage. Various lineup changes entailed a broad stylistic variance throughout their discography, ranging from fierce black metal tunes to warm symphonic harmonies with a slight avant-garde twitch while several recurring themes act as modest leitmotifs in their sound today. For their 20th anniversary, Borknagar return with a special release: one assembling all four singers the band had over the years on a single album: Winter Thrice.

In the last ten years, Borknagar's sound has simmered down to a unique blend of avant-garde, black, and symphonic metal. The last two albums have seen Lazare introduce more of his characteristic flat-toned vocals into the mix while ICS Vortex made a careful return to the band on a song or two on the latest few albums. The result is an entertaining vocal mix between Solefald, Age Of Silence, Arcturus, Vintersorg, and ICS Vortex's solo project. This continues on Winter Thrice, with the addition of backing vocals by Garm.

As expected, most of these songs bear a distinct Øystein G. Brun signature. A lot of the timings, the breaks, the riffs and the overall arrangement are very reminiscent of "the" Borknagar sound we know of late. Fans of Universal and Urd will immediately feel at home here, musically and production-wise. Vintersorg's heavy Swedish accent provides the trademark modulating vowels that have defined Borknagar's vocals since Empiricism and stand in a warm contrast to Lazare's creepy, impassive, narrative vocals. Contrary to previous releases, however, the band found a way to incorporate all four singers into the same mix this time. I do feel a certain sensation when the vocals are handed from Garm to Vintersorg over to masterfully staged climax moments by Vortex, even though both Garm and Vortex only have very few of these moments. Musically there aren't any surprises, even though the sheer amount of different elements make the album a hard one to digest at first. Winter Thrice is not an instant-gratification album but one whose joys unravel carefully, bit by bit, with each spin. It rewards fans of the scene with playful winks at the other bands of Borknagar's members and plays with subtle hints to previous releases, all well-hidden under a thick veil of sound and vocals.

It is this excess of influences, however, that I consider Winter Thrice's greatest problem even though I have always had the utmost respect for the band and their musical development. Borknagar have boldly developed a style that is neither black nor symphonic in its own right but advances into these and other musical territories with a sense of entitlement that is often irritating for genre-purists. Yet I feel - on this record more than ever - that none of these influences is given enough room to develop within its new ecosystem. Without a doubt these are excellent musicians who manage incorporate a broad musical range of into their music. But the load of different instruments and singers and the overall monotonously warm and soft sound do not provide enough edges to jab a knee on. And I want that from a good record. Songs like "Frostrite" and "The Earthling" from its predecessor were careful experiments, giving the album more of the sonic singularity that Winter Thrice definitely lacks. I do get my goosebumps when I listen to the songs, but they fail to captivate me much beyond their duration.

Winter Thrice is an excellent album, without a doubt. The fact that all of Borknagar's singers of two decades come together on a single release makes it worth your while. Having had a somewhat stable lineup for three albums, the band try a few, very welcome new things here. But much like after Universal and Urd I feel like their sound would profit from Lazare doing more vocals and less keyboards. Vintersorg, on the other hand, does magnificent growls that Borknagar's sound could use more of. The combination of singers overall is a great element here that I hope we will see more of in the future. Now if only the band dared to give us an edge, some contrast, an album hard to digest for complexity and not magnitude, I'm certain we would see another milestone release. And who knows, maybe that milestone leads the way for another 20 great years of Borknagar.