The Thing About ‘Wind’ by Frigoris
Is there a better black metal whisperer?
The Thing About is a series of short, simple heavy metal reviews. Scroll down to the headings that interest you most or read the whole thing. The previous installment was about Utbyrd’s album Varskrik.
Heavy metal, especially black metal, is obsessed with the cold. Bands try to capture this sound through their instrumentation, composition, production, cover art and sometimes even their names. To Celtic Frost, ColdWorld and Khold, add Frigoris, which means “cold weather” in Latin. On its 2013 album Wind, however, the band sounds less like the depth of winter than a late summer day with a breath of autumn. It’s black metal with warmth.
The Band
Frigoris is from Germany. According to the band’s Bandcamp profile, it brings to sound “The isolation and depression in modern society, the beauty of nature and a last shimmer of hope.” In an interview with the band’s current label Hypnotic Dirge Records, band leader, vocalist, songwriter and lyricist Dominik Winter mentions as influences Naglfar, Agalloch and Alcest. The band brought these impulses and influences together most recently on its 2020 release …In Stille.
The Music
Wind is the band’s second studio album and represents a shift away from the pagan metal of its debut. Bandcamp labels the particular style atmospheric/post black metal, but the album feels a lot like recent releases from melodic death metal band Insomnium for its melodies and overall hush. Winter does the anguished mid-range vocals you expect from black metal, but sometimes he drops to a whisper, and even when the band ratchets up, the mood remains meditative.
Wind is notable for its prominent acoustic guitar. The album opens and closes with it, sprinkles it throughout passages both quiet and loud, and includes one instrumental entirely on acoustic guitar (“Hauch”). These sections bring contrast but join seemlessly with the louder parts by avoiding anything overtly folkish, countrified or medieval. More than anything, the acoustic guitar is what stitches the album into what feels like one long composition.
The Art
The cover art suits well the acoustic guitar. At first glance, it’s unexciting, with a vast field of wheat dominating the foreground, but then your gaze wanders to a cluster of forms in the distance. Is that a modern farm with a silo? A rustic village with a steeple? A pre-industrial town with a clocktower? Without specifying exactly what it is, the artwork suggests a whole way of life. This is someplace you’d like to go for a walk and trail your hands over the heads of the stalks.
The Thing About
The thing about Wind is “Ode an Verloene Seelen.” Creepy sound bites that sound like they come from an old horror movie about Christian cultists gone bad were what first caught my attention. It’s hard not to imagine the villagers gathering with their torches and lunatic take on the Bible. Yet again, fact proves creepier than fiction because I’ve tracked down some of the quotes and they’re from the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp about the Kids on Fire School of Ministry. It’s a pagan jab at one of the world’s most powerful and long-lasting colonizing forces.
The Verdict
In conclusion, Wind is like a storm. It may thunder and rage at times, but it begins by brooding, pauses for an eerie calm in the center, and ends in serenity. The album is pleasant from first listen, but repeated listens reveal intricate craftsmanship.
Rating: 3.5/5
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