Wind Rose - Stonehymn (EN)

Founded as a young band in Italy in 2009, Windrose devoted himself to the epic / folk-inspired Power Metal. Already the predecessor album two years ago knew how to make me quite enthusiastic, because the mixture of powerful, partly deeply tuned Power Metal riffs and epic bombast / orchestral elements, decorated with a nice pinch of folk, worked quite well for me.
After a short intro, the third studio album of the band is initiated. Can Windrose fascinate again?

They do!
The first song, which follows the already very folk-inspired intro, carries the melodic title "Dance Of Fire" and firstly breaks out of the speakers with a powerful chorus. Rather quiet verses follow then, which give an absolute goose bump-creating atmosphere, as I have experienced it last time during the better Blind Guardian works.

When the stronger heavy metal part starts galloping again, everything is underlined with nearly sprawling chorales and the feeling of being whipped into a different dimension by a whirlpool. Windrose kidnap the listener into their world of dwarves and old myths, in which one also likes to swing the Colt, because already in the first song melodies are woven, which could almost be from Ennio Morricone himself. If someone in the background would scream "Yeehaa", then the Western atmosphere would be perfect.

If you want to use bands for comparison, then you can actually describe it briefly, simply by saying that here Orden Ogan meets Winterstorm plus some instrumental elements from Ensiferum and the mysticism of older Blind Guardian. The comparison with Winterstorm fits especially regardings the vocals, because the voice of frontman Franceso Cavalieri is always settled in rougher and deeper areas and lends the pieces thereby a heroic seeming side. If you get excited about this, you should quickly move to the next record store and put the album on the shelf.

Nevertheless, I have a problem with the band, which I can not ignore and what I noticed at the last album already. Even if the bands used for the comparison have a certain catchiness so that some songs stick in your head for weeks, Windrose simply lacks the right hooks and catchy choruses that really get stuck. This gets lost a little in all the great arrangements and the oversized production unfortunately. Perhaps this is also the intention of the band and you take this as a style element. As a result, the music of Windrose is not a "light diet" and can not be consumed in the meantime. You have to get into the world a bit, which you enter here and you hand yourself over to it. If you do this, but you get the full force and splendor of Windrose and you are formally overwhelmed by great melodies and massively different ideas, which again and again flow in. Furthermore, the album offers only 7 songs next to two intros, which may seem a little slight. After all, none of the full pieces is shorter than 5 minutes.

Conclusion:
The new Windrose album offers again the highest quality. This time, we have a little more focus on the folk influences than before, which is absolutely welcome. However, in all the mixture of big arrangements and fat riffs plus great musical melodies, I simply miss the catchiness and so the music unfortunately does not remain well enough in the ear. But whoever takes time and wants to explore the world that is presented to him here, will find an excellent piece of metal, paired with orchestral and folky elements, which is also a lot of fun.

Rating: 9/10

Recommendation: Dance Of Fire, The Eyes of the Mountain