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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exceptional, November 16, 2004
This is an exceptional album from a unique black metal band. It features excellent songwriting with a strong folk influence, great musicianship all around, including the successful integration of accordian into black metal, and an awesome sense of epic/fantasy storytelling through music that other genres such as power metal often strive for, but often fail at.
I encourage you to buy this CD, "Arntor", and give it the chance to make an impression, regardless of the sound, which those of you new to the genre may find harsh. It should preferrably be experienced as a complete work, played all the way through as an album; you won't find any pop radio singles here. My tastes range from classical to the very extreme, and I will always rate this CD in my top 10 favorite albums.
It is very sad and unfortunate that the man behind this band has passed away at the young age of only 25, reportedly freezing to death in a blizzard. His band members have closed the book on Windir with a final tribute double CD entitled "Valfar, Ein Windir". Thanks for reading, good day to you.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Folky Black Metal, October 24, 2002
This album is Black Metal. Windir is a one man band. Valfar ( the one man)is an adept guitar player who uses some strange sounds and effects not typical of his genre, and he also uses an audible (!) bass sound in his mix. Continuing in the atypical-ness, this album is imbued with folk. Not in the way you'd expect though. For a good example, listen to "Arntor, Ein Windir" anyway you can. ... Windir rocks, buy now.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Atmospheric black metal at its finest, February 4, 2005
This is the only Windir release I've heard, so I can't really compare it with any of their other work, but what I do know is that this release is some atmospheric black metal of the highest order. After an excellent intro that has a good tune and displays a much quieter and lighter tone to the rest of the songs, Arntor ein Warrior kicks in with its very relentless speed and noise along with a chilling opening riff. It sets the tone for the whole rest of the album well. There are only seven songs, but each one is very drawn out, the intro and outro are each over 3 minutes long, while all of the actual songs exceed six minutes in length. That isn't necessarily a bad thing though, Windir manage to keep you interested for the entire length of each song with some great guitar lines, the use of keyboards and choirs and the medieval styled sound it produces, and the great atmosphere that is created when listening.
Don't go thinking though that because it's atmospheric and contains some keyboards that it's something that you could quite happily play in the car while driving your granny to the old people's home. For the most part this is still black metal, and much of it is still stunningly fast with the chilling shrieks of Valfar (RIP) on vocals. They just do very well using all the instruments available to them to create some very high level metal music. If you like metal then Arntor will blow you away, the only possible letdown is the track Saknet. Don't get me wrong, it's good, but it's over ten minutes long yet it feels like there aren't as many ideas there as in other shorter tracks. As I said earlier, I can't compare this with any of their other works, but what's clear here is their wide use of instruments such as synths and melodies to create a black metal masterpiece as far as I see it. It's also clear that Valfar was an immensely talented songwriter, having written all of the lyrics and music for this whole album. If you like black metal and you don't have any Windir in your collection, I would recommend this, it has all you could ask for from an album in the genre.
Best tracks are: Arntor ein Warrior, Svartesmeden og Lundamyrstrollet, Kampen
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