WINTERLONG – Longing For Winter

Winterlong is the Nordic Neoclassical Progressive/Power Metal band that is, of course, the brainchild of guitarist Thorbjörn Englund. Over the course of four albums, dating back to 2001, the band has gone through a number of line-up changes. In today’s times a lot of bands come and go. Perhaps in the modern day Metal scene it’s not out of the ordinary to believe a band with four albums is a true Metal staple. Typically when a band is between albums, and perhaps to buy themselves some production time, the label decides to put out a “greatest hits” or “best of” release. With a Shred Metal band such as Winterlong, there are truly no “hits,” per se, as this term is generally reserved for those Pop bands that dominate most modern day radio stations.

Whatever the premise, Longing For Winter is a whopping eighteen tracks of Shred Progressive Metal culling some great tracks from the band’s four album history, as well as throwing in four previously unreleased tracks for good measure. It’s really hard to quantify if all these tracks are Winterlong’s “greatest,” but one thing is certain all tracks on this collection rock and are worthy of any Progressive Metal lover’s attention.

Newcomers to the band, or the curious, can expect to find strong material here from their first three albums that falls more into the Progressive or Power Metal category. The fourth release, Metal/Technology, represented a shift in direction with Thorbjörn taking on all instrumentation and vocal tasks. The end result was something that seemed somewhat experimental, in Winterlong terms, and ended up resulting in favoring heavier, Pantera style riffs.

The included four unreleased tracks unfortunately do not exude the same production qualities that the first three albums demonstrated. Nevertheless, all four are still kick ass tracks and wind up being plenty of reason for the modest Winterlong fans to purchase this release. The only downside to these type of collections, Longing For Winter not being an exception, is that their tracks are typically never presented in chronological order. Certainly this is a minor complaint, perhaps only reserved for the die hard Winterlong fan, and shouldn’t be reason to prevent anyone from enjoying this strong catalog of songs!

For newcomers, this is a welcome introduction to the band’s exceptionally strong works. For the die hards, the additional four unreleased tracks are worth the price of admission. If “best of” releases ever became a norm on listeners’ “Top Ten Of The Year” lists then Longing For Winter should be 2008’s entry!