Winter
Into Darkness/Eternal Frost

There is little news about the American band Winter. They are famous for this album and for the EP included in the new edition, for having participated in a compilation by the label Nuclear Blast, and for very little else. Perhaps (I repeat: perhaps), the trio reunited some years ago with the aim of playing some live dates, but no new material seems to be present.

The three doom metallers in question were from New York and were fanatics of Black Sabbath, Celtic Frost, and Obituary. Death metal "slow", that’s how the press defined at the time the interesting proposal of this band. Listening to the album, however, it becomes clear that fortunately there is more to it! The primordial Death Metal of bands like Morbid Angel and the aforementioned Obituary was just the starting point for the music contained in "Into The Darkness" and "Eternal Frost".

More interesting, in detail, are the Ultra-Doom riffs that owed so much to Sabbath but also to that malevolent Helvetic creature mentioned at the beginning of this review, which all extreme metal reveres and considers as a godmother: Celtic Frost. When I talk about the Frost, mind you, I do not mean those of "Into The Pandemonium" nor those of the more commercial period (the dreadful "Cold Lake" or "Vanity/Nemesis"). No. When I talk about the Frost I mean, above all, "Morbid Tales" and the famous "To Mega Therion".

Drums and guitars like steamrollers advancing at the speed of a tank.

Suffocating and rotten songs, semi-amateur recording, social denunciation lyrics, and an indispensable apocalyptic vision typical of every respectable metal band. In this sense, I highlight the massive "Goden", the bleak "Destiny", and the shorter but no less devastating "Servant Of The Warsmen".

The entire Funeral-Doom scene, but also the Doom-Gothic scene so dear to the old Paradise Lost, pays a heavy tribute to the only work realized by Winter in the distant 1990 (the EP, however, is from '94). Seek out the new version of this album and grab it without too many questions. Apart from the banal pacifism of the lyrics, derived from humanitarian Grind, the music hurts like the worst Napalm strike.