Review: Winterfylleth - “The Mercian Sphere” (2010)
I was never really able to get into The Ghosts of Heritage, so obviously I wasn’t really looking forward to Winterfylleth’s follow-up effort The Mercian Sphere much at all. Then one of its songs came up while I was shuffling through tracks and I was completely blown away by how much the band has evolved. Instead of being made up of several very similar-sounding songs, The Mercian Sphere feels leaner and more varied, with a few 10+ minute epics, a couple well-written acoustic/folk tracks and of course a few slabs of driving pagan metal. The Mercian Sphere sees the band really starting to come into their own, and everything they didn’t do convincingly on their first album they manage to absolutely nail here.
Like its predecessor, The Mercian Sphere is instantly digestible, as all the elements of their sound have been done before numerous times. The difference is in the execution: the band’s use of clean vocals has become a strength, the riffing is much more varied and songs are allowed to evolve and build gradually. The obligatory acoustic tracks, ‘The Woods Were Young’ and ‘Children of the Stones’ are both excellent, and the former even features a cello providing the main melody, which is a nice touch. Aside from those, several tracks open with folksy acoustic passages before thrusting the listener into the battlefield with an onslaught of metallic fury. Winterfylleth also uses tempo changes quite effectively in their songs, with a favorite trick being to switch from a blasting fast riff into a churning half time riff, which sounds awesome every time they do it.
The fact that Winterfylleth hail from the UK and incorporate Anglo-Saxon mythology and history into their lyrics makes them somewhat unique, although with this new album they can certainly stand toe-to-toe with some of Europe’s best pagan/viking bands. Going through the band members and their other projects is somewhat interesting: aside from the fact that Winterfylleth’s members also play in some other prominent bands (Wodensthrone, Atavist, Heathen Foray), it seems like there’s kind of a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing going on with the UK’s metal bands. You can pretty much link any band in the UK - even prominent ones like Fen, My Dying Bride, <code>, The Axis of Perdition, or Ackercocke - to any other band through a couple jumps between current and former band members. It’s certaily a weird phenomenon and one I haven’t really come across in any other scene to that extent. Perhaps that sharing of talent and experience is partly responsible for the slew of great bands coming out of the UK metal scene, and judging from the maturity and talent Winterfylleth display on The Mercian Sphere, they are certainly reaping the benefits.
