Kalt Vindur - "Delusions" (Mara Productions, 2017)

Band: Kalt Vindur
Title: Delusions
Genre: Progressive Black/Doom Metal
Time: 32.42 min
Release Date: 10th October 2017
Rating: 69/100











You know, Poland has one of my favorite extreme metal scenes in the world, so it isn't a case if I am used to talk about many Polish bands on these pages. And these Kalt Vindur, whose guitarist Artur Szydło contacted me some months ago in order to ask me if I wanted to review the debut album of his band, are other worthy representatives of the vital Polish extreme scene. We are talking about an ambitious quartet (now a quintet with the addition of the guitarist Marcin Borula) that, founded in 2015, debuted directly with a full-lenght album called "Delusions", published through Mara Productions from Poland, too. Yes, you know, I don't like so much the bands that release their debut album after so few years from their foundation and without publishing anything before it. But I must say that, even though the result could be decisevely better, Kalt Vindur sounds in a really interesting way. So, let's discover it!


Firstly, "Delusions" is a 6-track album mainly composed by the same Artur while the lyrics were mainly written by the singer Wojciech Kozub. Apart these technical details, Kalt Vindur (this strange moniker comes from the Icelandic language and stands for "cold wind") plays a creative form of black/doom metal with many prog elements, that are able to make quite unpredictable the entire music. You can find these "prog elements" in some complex drum patterns, in the basswork and in bizarre solutions regarding the guitars (like in some oriental melodies present, for example, in "Mantra"), and in the frequent use of the keyboards/synths by the guest Jerzy Głód (Lux Occulta, Neolith), that adds also styles very far from the metal music, as you'll see soon.

But don't worry, Kalt Vindur never plays in a too technical or "virtuosistic" way, also because they give a good importance to the atmosphere. This is shown by the type of guitar solos played, or by the synths, that are able to create not only ambient parts but also suggestive sounds closer to the synthwave, like in "Nangar K'hell". Anyway, the most atmospheric song is maybe "Nim słońce wyśni...", a semi-instrumental with little whispering vocals in Polish by Artur.

However, Kalt Vindur has also skills in showing a good amount of violence, like in some abrupt and chaotic explosions of rage full of very nervous drums while, from time to time, there are even blast-beats. And vocally, the violence is surely guaranteed by a singer of the calibre of Wojciech, who is really expressive, also thanks to emotive lyrics such as the one of "Fiery Storm (W dolinie śmierci) ", that see the English translation of the monologue of a man that fought, in September 1944, in the Dukla/Presov operation, that's the biggest mountain operation during the World War II (and here I underline that, precisely, Kalt Vindur comes just from the towns of Dukla and Krosno).

So, everything seem to be good but, as I said in the introduction, the album "could be decisevely better". The main problems comes from the songwriting since some tracks tend to repeat the same things without creativity, with the result to be static. This is especially the case of the closing "And the Light is Gone", that's unable also to create a real and memorable climax. Another song that doesn't works well is "Fiery Storm (W dolinie śmierci)", a 7-minute opus that is a bit confusionary and lacking of fluidity, especially starting from an instrumental sequence, repeated rapidly even for 4 times in which there are 2 fast and also hysterical passages, that could be developed in a better way, maybe just with the help of the vocals. At the end, the only songs that I like are "Mantra", "Nim słońce wyśni..." and "Nangar K'hell". And at this point, I think seriously that Kalt Vindur needed to release something before the debut album, so to focus better their style in a more compact manner.

In the light of all this, my final sensation about "Delusions" is conflicting. In fact, on a hand, it "could be decisevely better" since the songwriting suffer of useless repetitions and lack of fluidity. On the other hand, Kalt Vindur are so rich of ideas that they show a lot of potentialities still not entirely expressed, so I strongly believe that they promises plenty of nice things in their next releases to come. Fortunately, we'll discover soon if the band focused better their style because they are working on a new album called "And Nothing is Endless", that is supposed to be released between 2019 and 2020. In addition, Kalt Vindur are searching for some labels available to release their debut album in vinyl format and also to reissue it on CD in the CIS territories. So, come on labels, please contact Kalt Vindur immediately since they deserve your support!

Tracklist:

1 - The Art of Suffering
2 - Mantra
3 - Fiery Storm (W dolinie śmierci)
4 - Nim słońce wyśni...
5 - Nangar K'hell
6 - And the Light is Gone

Line-up:

Wojciech Kozub - vocals
Artur Szydło - guitars
Szymon Hadała - bass
Julian Zacharjasz - drums

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/Kalt-Vindur-437939709930827/
BandCamp: https://kaltvindur.bandcamp.com/
Mara Productions: http://awakeninginthedark.pl/