{"id":123503,"date":"2024-08-29T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/?p=123503"},"modified":"2024-08-29T17:45:51","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T22:45:51","slug":"review-wintersun-time-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/review-wintersun-time-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Wintersun – Time II<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It’s about goddamn time\u00a0ayyyyyyyyyy<\/em>.
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Let me get this out of the way now: I don’t plan on making any fuss about the multiple crowdfunding campaigns over the past few years or their perceived value to backers. There have already been plenty of pieces on that already, plenty of sauna jokes bandied about, and so on. By all means, feel free to get into it in the comments if you so choose, but I would like to engage with and review this album in good faith. I’m going to leave any biases spawned from the nonsense surrounding the band at the door and just look at the music on its own merits.<\/p>\n

With that out of the way, let’s get to the fun part. This has been a long time coming- damn near 20 years, in fact, having originally been announced as a single album entitled Time<\/i> (no numerical additives) back in 2006. For all the hoopla around the album’s production in the latter half of those 18 years, the band really was put through the ringer making this record. Hardware failures, day jobs, health issues writer’s block, and total file loss of its recordings are all problems that plagued the band’s progress those first few years. It eventually expanded in scope, with Time I<\/i> releasing in late 2012. I have now spent just short of a third of my life waiting for this album to come out.<\/p>\n

Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

But that’s all in the past, and against all expectations, Time II<\/i> is finally here. True to Jari’s word, Time II<\/i> picks up right where its predecessor left off, gulf in releases be damned. Depending on how you look at it, this means it’s either a grand and sweeping piece of extreme power metal that strikes you to your emotional core or it’s bloated, over-produced garbage that falls flat in its attempts to be cinematic. Regardless of your views, it’s stylistically identical to its predecessor, bombastic and over-the-top in both production and composition.<\/p>\n

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Behold, the Time Sausage<\/p><\/div>\n

I can already hear some\u00a0Wintersun<\/strong> self-titled stalwarts groaning at the prospect of straining their ears trying to hear the guitars and bass through a cacophony of synths and choirs, but trust me here; this album is much better mixed within the same general framework as Time I<\/em>. Where the band was buried under a dozen layers of orchestrations before, they are now rightfully front and center of the mix. The production elements still take the forefront here and there to carry an important melody or accent certain passages, but they’re largely used for ornamentation and texture this time around. The guitars are the real stars of the show here, and I was very happy hearing the bass consistently cutting through the mix in a significant way for probably the first time across Wintersun’s whole discography. It may be just shy of brickwalled, but this is inarguably the best the band has sounded since the debut.<\/p>\n