Band:	Wintersun
Album:	The Forest Seasons
Style:	Extreme power metal
Release date:	July 21, 2017
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Awaken From The Dark Slumber (Spring)
02. The Forest That Weeps (Summer)
03. Eternal Darkness (Autumn)
04. Loneliness (Winter)
05. Loneliness (Winter) [acoustic version] [Digibook bonus]

I can't believe I nearly missed one of the biggest releases of 2017. I totally lost track of time. Here I am, three whole months late, and I'm only just getting to the new Wintersun. Oh, man. How embarrassing, right, guys?

Time II this is not. The Forest Seasons still contains unwieldy amounts of orchestration, but the many tracks blur together into a flat, repressed miasma wholly unlike the dazzling blizzard of melodies that festooned Time I. I had certainly expected a different approach from the last album, but I thought that that would mean something closer in spirit to the debut. This lackluster mélange of symphony and metal is hardly the same band whose impeccable timing, stunningly crisp performance, and intimate knowledge of epic craftsmanship forged songs like "Winter Madness," "Battle Against Time," and "Starchild." "Awaken From The Dark Slumber (Spring)" pursues a sense of scale that's just out of reach, and certain points throughout the album wander into some cheap, ersatz black metal with guitars so thin and colorless that the continuity with Wintersun's older material is completely lost. The confusing change in atmosphere sounds at first blush like a misguided attempt to rebrand Wintersun as a darker, heavier band, but soon The Forest Seasons shows its hand and it becomes apparent that the album's mystifying gloom has more to do with a lack of inspiration than an overabundance of it.

Nearly ten minutes pass before the advent of the first crowded chorus finally suggests something of the old Wintersun, but with nothing substantial to hold onto, that chorus passes as if it had never arrived. It's 22 minutes, halfway into "The Forest That Weeps (Summer)," before a remarkably Wintersun-like riff muscles its way into the center aisle and illuminates the album with the brand of powerful, melodic leads that I had expected to hear from the first minute. This is the first point when the album truly feels alive. All too soon the heroic riff gives way to canned symphony. The chorus goes down smoothly the first time, thanks to Jari's still-mighty clean vocals, but when translated into a group chorus, it does nothing other than sluggishly compel the song to die. Jari gathered a phenomenal posse of backing vocalists - members of Turisas, Ensiferum, Týr, Moonsorrow, and others - and didn't give them anything to sing. Gone are the stirring, anthemic hooks and rippling blazes of instrumental prowess; gone are the vibrance and vivacity that once pushed Wintersun to the forefront of the metal scene and defined their own genre.

All the energy and profundity that defined Wintersun have evaporated, leaving only a run-of-the-mill heavy metal band trying to be progressive, heroic, and sinister and coming off tedious, passe, and compressed. The album has its merits; some of the soloing in "Loneliness (Winter)" is fabulous, Jari remains in pretty good voice, and every song contains a few moments where I perk up and think, "Yes, that's Wintersun." I must confess that I will probably find myself singing the chorus to "Summer" six months from now - but getting to those standout moments requires patience, and if there's one thing that most Wintersun fans have long since run out of, it's patience. More often than not I find myself waiting for the real song to start and lamenting how muddy and enervating the production is.

Had I no exposure to the years-long soap opera As the World Turns Around Jari, had I no external information to indicate that I was listening to a stopgap measure implemented to prop up another promised new album, I could nonetheless believe that this was Wintersun's B-material, a repository created to drain the runoff from Time II; I could believe that this production was Jari's way of saying, "See how badly I need a better studio?" and that this album got pushed out purely to stack up the big bucks for more Time. Wintersun has so many textures, such depth of feeling, such explosive energy; Time I bristles with melody and momentum, building up to monumental choruses. The Forest Seasons opens awkwardly, contains far too much filler, and ends in disappointment. Wintersun is more than this dreary melodrama.