Style: Dissonant black metal, avant-garde metal (Mixed vocals, mostly harsh)
Recommended for fans of: Rotting Christ, Behemoth
Country: Cyprus
Release date: 5 April 2025
Many black metal bands tout an ‘evil’ and ‘satanic’ aesthetic; among the grim and frostbitten band photos, becoming a Progeny of the Great Apocalypse, and embodying a trve kvlt lifestyle, imagery of hellish landscapes should be par for the course for the genre. After all, what hotter place is there to hang out for a black-metalhead than The Devil’s Condo? Well, on closer inspection, one finds that black metal is often missing that je ne Satan quoi, choosing to focus on evil acts instead of embodying the nature of the underworld. And that’s to say nothing of the myriad hippie black metal bands who write about nature and skirt the subject entirely.1 That’s where today’s topic of discussion, Frozen Winds, come in: on latest record, Keys to Eschaton, the Cypriots aim to create a truly hellish experience, getting to the heart of all things twisted and incomprehensible. Does Keys to Eschaton open the gates of Hades to the listener, or is there a better chance of getting in when Hell freezes over?
Frozen Winds incorporate melodics and variety into their black metal base through adjacent styles, including heavy metal (“Theosphoros”), thrash metal (“Crown”), and doom metal (“Jesters of Desolation”). Additionally, a bevy of vocal techniques are used across Keys to Eschaton, from guttural bellows and throaty shrieks to clean verses and even throat singing. Tracks follow virtually no resemblance of a verse-chorus structure, instead exploring ideas in a free-flowing framework designed to transition between ideas from moment to moment. What ties this approach together is the unwelcoming and occasionally nightmarish atmosphere that pervades the record: unsettling soundscapes, manic vocal delivery, and dissonant riffs appear on nearly every track.
All of these elements coalesce in an experience that sounds as if it were actually manufactured in Hell. Frozen Winds invoke black metal’s Hadean sensibilities by searing them into every moment of Keys to Eschaton—the listener is unceremoniously sentenced to wander a vast oblivion, some places hopelessly expansive and others claustrophobic and cavernous. Ominous, incoherent whispers on opener “Theosphoros”, shrieking laughter and punctuated, dissonant guitar stabs on “Spirit of the Womb”, and foreboding throat singing on “Jesters of Desolation” and “Epiclesis to Amenti” work to remind the listener that the world they are exploring is designed for creatures wholly unlike them. The effect isn’t overwhelming, but it’s enough to elicit a surreal and existential discomfort along with a morbid curiosity that urges onward the exploration of its twisted crags.
While Keys to Eschaton‘s pieces are undoubtedly challenging and hostile, Frozen Winds are endowed with a compositional understanding that makes these extended stream-of-consciousness pieces flow with ease. Between variation in style and clever use of dynamics, the flow of these tracks tempers the hellacious experience and prevents it from teetering into frustration. “From the Caverns”, for example, begins with black metal riffage and overlaid clean vocals before transitioning into punctuated heavy metal, bouncing back and forth between these styles until the ground collapses underneath to a sparse bass line; hushed whispers join in, adorned by acoustic guitar. A standalone shriek pierces through the contemplative moment, mercilessly yanking the listener back into ferocious tremolos and blasting drums in one of Keys to Eschaton‘s most powerful and compelling moments.
Exemplary songwriting can only go so far without a solid backbone in instrumentation, however. Each track manages to have at least one moment of intrigue, whether it be the explosive interplay between staccato riffing and expansive tremolos on “Jesters of Desolation”, the soaring and deliciously melodic solo on “Io Agia Pantokratora”, or the idiosyncratic rhythmic stylings of “Crown”, which sound as if Tool were headlining a festival in the seventh circle of Hell. Unfortunately, Keys to Eschaton‘s instrumentation fails to transcend ‘decent’ most of the time, as its best moments come from dynamic compositional techniques and not from the riffs themselves. This means that individual moments of tracks like “Spirit of the Womb” and “Theosphoros” come across as relatively anonymous, serving more to contrast dynamics and style than to draw in the listener or create a point of intrigue. The comparative dearth of powerful riffs reduces any overall enjoyment of Keys to Eschaton from an exciting visceral reaction deserving of its vivid imagery to ‘this is a cool way to combine these ideas and form a piece’, preventing its expert composition from elevating into something beyond analytical interest.
Were every riff as compelling as those on “Jesters of Desolation” or “From the Caverns”, Keys to Eschaton would unquestionably sit as a landmark of dissonant black metal. Unfortunately, this is just not the case, as the main facet holding back Frozen Winds is a sense of underwhelm in their riff construction, attenuating the potentially massive impact of their diverse songwriting style. Don’t let this stop you from indulging in their hellscapes, though: little can hide the fact that Keys to Eschaton is put together magnificently, imparting harrowing compositions with a smooth flow that adds a shocking degree of listenability to its infernal aesthetic.
Recommended tracks: Jesters of Desolation, Crown, From the Caverns
You may also like: Thy Darkened Shade, Aenaon
Final verdict: 7/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Visceral Promotions – Facebook | Official Website
Frozen Winds is:
– AdΩnis (vocals, guitars)
– Panagiotis (drums)
– Sophia (vocals)
– Stelios (bass)
- I make this joke because I am, in fact, one of those hippie black-metalheads. ↩︎
0 Comments