Since 1999 Midwinter released a demo and a full-length album, and now they released their 2^nd album, Between Wisdom And Lunacy. For some reason I expected something like Children Of Bodom. But after the intro, when the first song began, it was clear it sounded different, it reminded me of Cradle Of Filth and perhaps a little of Anorexia Nervosa. What surprised me in this song were the clean vocals, I didn’t see that coming, but it didn’t sound bad. The Cradle influence is very clear, after about 4 minutes there is a spoken part which reminds me of those of Dani Filth.

For those who think “Oh no, not another Cradle rip-off”, I can assure you it is not. The songs are way more compact, and the song structures differ a lot. It is also more heavy metal based. And sometimes it has these typical jolly power metal-like keyboard parts and vocals. I needed some time to appreciate those, but after a while I really started to like it. The combination of the dark parts and sometimes the jolly stuff is okay for me. Then there is the song ‘Dragonrock’ that surprised me. It is a mix of modern melodic black metal with heavy metal and Cronos vocals, you know, the dude of Venom.  

 

So I like the music, but how about the production? Well I can be very short about that. The production is very good, it is mixed very well, and the sound is very clear and fits the music very well. So if you are into the epic melodic heavy black metal, this sure is worth listening. An extra bonus song, which is not on the album, can be downloaded from their website.