Most folk metal bands use intentionally stupid sounding happy folk melodies on folk instruments over average to bad guitars without adding atmosphere to it at all. When I first discovered Windir I was listening to a lot of Wintersun and Ensiferum. The happiness of such bands was something that was getting to me. I wanted to hear new folk metal bands. A website got me into Windir and Mithotyn. Over a period of 6 months I had gotten into 21 new Folk Metal bands and 2 new black metal bands. Windir was the best of all of these and no other band came even close to them.
Windir did things differently.... Instead of using happy folk melodies gotten from folk music, Windir tried using dark sinister sounding Norwegian hymn melodies and played them on guitar and accordion, the instrument they were originally played on. This created dark sounding melodies, something I value a lot. Happy melodies piss me off. On top of that haunting keyboards were used throughout the songs to add dark atmosphere to them, something no other folk metal band even attempted...
A few months later I discovered This idiot who was posting shitty ass Windir Reviews like the below review of Windir's best cd.. "arntor"...
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/42976/Windir-Arntor/
This fucking idiot has spammed the following shitty reviews of Windir albums over the following sites... metal-archives.com (cthonicism), Sputnickmusic.com (hyperbore), rateyourmusic.com (Rusted Idiot) and maybe even more (I haven't checked)... The guy even made fun of Valfar's death on his review of Windir's second demo. He is a shitty reviewer who only gives "brutal" metal good reviews. Good atmospheric metal like this gets shitty reviews minus a few. But it seems he has spammed his shitty windir reviews all over the these review sites and none of them even care. The lack of integrity they show is ridiculous to allow total trashing of bands music as an official "review".
On the review of Artnor this idiot posted on sputnikmusic, he kept on trolling posters who protested the review by reposting his rating and made fun of them several times. To me this is proof he is a troll... I urge any Windir Fans to send the following message to metal-archives.com, sputnickmusic.com and rateyourmusic.com demanding they delete his account...
"There is a troll going around posting shitty reviews of a great Metal Band (Windir). He is using stupid bullshit criticism to trash any and all cd's by the band. He is going around multiple sites copy and pasting his reviews to those sites. He has posted reviews of Windir's albums to multiple sites using different names for each. For Rateyourmusic.com he is knwon as "rusted Idiot", for sputnickmusic.com he is known as "hyperbore" and for "metal-archives.com" he is known as "Cthonicisms". He posts mean reviews that try to say that windir's music sucked (It didn't) and trolls the fans of the music in many of his reviews calling them man children and worse. I urge you to perimently delete his account, he is mocking the review process to trash a dead metal legend. Do something about idiots like this, don't let them ruin Valfar's (windir's founder) Legacy. Attached is a review he made for Windir's second cd Arntor...
Review Summary:
On its second LP, Windir cements its identity once and for all, but in
so doing proves itself to be devoid of any but the most banal of merits.
What most obviously separates this music from the heights metal can achieve in its greatest moments is its aesthetic of mood. Whereas metal is most commonly known as angry music, this is mostly happy. Not expressive of the joy of conquest common to power metal, or the appreciation of beauty common to certain niches of black metal, but simply HAPPY. These tracks sound more like drinking songs than anything else, which relegates them to occupying the same conceptual space - mindless, bouncy expressions of having a good ol' time, without a care in the world, because nothing needs to be taken seriously anyway. By expressing this aesthetic and being a metal album, it fails massively.
Composition continues to be simplistic, as in the band's previous output, although there are obvious occurrences of ambition sprinkled in. "Svartesmeden Og Lundamyrstrollet" at least attempts to develop itself linearly, eventually rescinding its irritatingly goofy lead hook for an atmospheric transition that is punctuated by the appearance of an arpeggiated couple of chords before gradually leading back into that main hook for a sincere, if trite, attempt at a conclusion. The ridiculously overlong-for-its-content "Saknet" takes a similar approach by moving its atmospheric section towards the end of the track, providing a lead-out that would close the album on a tolerable note if not for the following final track that, aside from its possibly being the worst song here, is also jarring in its overindulgent intensity that would be better placed at the beginning of this work.
As before, Windir's primary compositional approach here is to layer lead hooks comprised of overly dichotomous notes over two- or three-chord drawn-out rhythm riffing. Although there is some improvement in this album's desire to be expressive, with interstitial "heavy" riff sections to space out the songs a bit and occasional more dynamic uses of the rhythm section, it remains a boorish affair overall that is only made worse by Windir's full adoption of being mind-numbingly light. What little there is to like here is drowned in sappy melodies that carry nothing beyond their face value, and sound more like Disney music than anything else. This is the kind of metal that is not metal, and as such even mopey one-dimensional teenage pop is better than this. At least that has the decency to decline pretending to be something it's not. Windir is children's music made for adults, and as such this will be popular with man-children and nobody else.
People like this should not be allowed to post reviews! Where is your integrity. They trash a DEAD musician's music after his death, not just any musician, but a musician with tons of talent, and you let it happen? Where the fuck is your integrity! You have no integrity you stupid fucks! Immediately correct your mistake by banning the account of the user! It's the only way to fix the mistake YOU CAUSED!"
http://www.metal-archives.com/users/Chthonicisms
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/user/Hyperbore
http://rateyourmusic.com/~RustingIdiot
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