Band:	Winterborn
Album:	Farewell To Saints
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	November 19, 2008
Guest review by:	-Mayhem-

01. Black Rain
02. Chaos Dwells Within
03. Seven Deadly Sins
04. Overture 1939
05. The Winter War
06. The Land Of The Free
07. Emptiness Inside
08. Nightfall Symphony
09. Another World
10. Last Man Standing
11. Forever Gone [Japanese bonus]

Winterborn is a young band serving some good power metal for the fans of the genre. The band was founded in 2004 but two years later they had already their debut album in stores and their first tour coming up. Things kept going well as the debut album Cold Reality was received well by critics. However, the band had all kinds of problems with getting their sophomore album released and it was postponed over and over again. Yet once it got finally released I could just say it was worth the wait.

This time around things are a bit different. Farewell to Saints is a lot darker and heavier than its predecessor. Still the same progressiveness and melodic content in the songs has remained. The performance is good and there are no complaints to be made about any instrument. Everything is just as it should be but there is still a lot of room for improvement since I am not overly impressed by the performance. The vocals for example have no big problems on the album but aren't exceptionally good either. The production has seen a huge improvement (the biggest problem with the debut was the bad sound). Drums sounded nothing like drums at all and the guitars sounded a bit weak. Now every little problem has been taken care of and the sound is really good throughout the album. The guitars dominate the album and there are far less keyboards on this album and the change is good since this time around production does not eat the riffs. The album has a very deep sound overall. Cold Reality had a lot of great songs but it also had some weaker creations as well. Farewell to Saints on the other hand has no weak songs but it doesn't have any real hit songs either. The song quality remains good from the first moment until the last. There is nice stylistic variety in the songs too. The album does not repeat itself at any time and the album flows pretty well from the beginning till the end.

Overall Farewell to Saints is a very solid album but not earthshaking. It does exactly what the debut did with improvement in many fields. If you liked the debut I suggest you buy this one as well and if you still haven't bought either one, then go ahead.