Customer Reviews

Focusing Blur

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Will probably be my favourite release of this year with Borknagar's Epic (which Vintersorg also lends his voice to). The folk part of this album is more interesting than the metal part because it's a little more original. My favourite tracks are Dark Matter Mystery, A Microscopical Macrcosm and The Essence, in no particular order.

The best on this album is the bass which plays a very important part and you can always here it throughout.
People often say this may sound weird the first time but I loved it instantly when Essence fired up.

I recommend this to anyone interested in music and ask them to get used to the screaming vocals if they don't listen to metal.

Vintersorg's The Focusing Blur is masterpeice sadly ahead of its time. The creative genius displayed on this album is most humbling. The lyrics are just brillant. I've never heard anything like them put to music. Seriously, if you want meaningful philosophical-metaphysical ponderings on the nature of the Universe(s) and our place in it with your avant-garde metal; this is the album for you. Just glancing at the song titles will give you an idea. Do a search for the lyrics they are worth the read even if you don't have the music. However, the music is stellar. Its amazingly amazing. Its catchy. Its bizarre. And it rocks.
Due to the lack of reviews here I suspect The Focusing Blur is unjustly underated and/or obscure. This album is truly something special and it deserves attention and praise. If more people listened to this the world would be a better place. Seriously.

At first glance this album is a little bit weird, but after you listen closely to it you star to find lot and lost of great ideas and musical experiments. This by any means want to tell you that Vintersorg has left metal, no way, he is in the music style more than never but his progresive folk tendencies are more interesting thistime.
The sounds of his guitars and keyboard are specialy good and the drums have a lot of strenght. But bass nead a special mention in this album. It is perfect and strong the sound feals avery hole and few are the times you lost track of it.

The album sounds in the same kind of line as the last one "visions of the spiral generator" but is fresh and if is right to tell "at the state of the art" in metal.

Vintersorg Rules in Folk metal don't forget to buy this album
don't loose the oportunity of listen to one of the most important musicians of the new century.

Vintersorg are one heck of a strange band. At least, they have been for the last few albums. What started as a folky viking metal act has turned out to be a progressive avant-garde black metal band that combines both philosophical and scientific reasoning. All this creates a very unique listening experience even if it's not always completely convincing in its finality.

Personally, I much prefer Vintersorg in its modern incarnation (ie. since "Cosmic Genesis") and particularly enjoyed 2002's "Visions From the Spiral Generator". "The Focusing Blur" continues this sound while adding even more bizarre ingredients to the mix.

For the uninitiated, Vintersorg is led by a simply fantastic singer that goes by the same name (also known as Andreas Hedlund). If you're a fan of Borknagar, then you will recognise his distinct clean and black metal style vocals immediately as he's been a fulltime member of that band since 2001. Also of particular note, is the presence of metal legend Steve DiGeorgio (Death, Sadus, Testament to name a few) on base guitar. With names like these involved, you know that you're going to get some great musicianship. But great musicianship does not necessary automatically make great music and "The Focusing Blur" is the perfect example of this (Winds also comes to mind). There are some inspired moments throughout the album that get me nodding my approval. Tracks like "Matrix Odyssey", "Microcosmical Micro and "Star Puzzled" are thoroughly enjoyable and bring to mind the eccentricity of Arcturus. I can't help feel though that Vintersorg are trying too hard to be unique and interesting and on some occasions, things just get bizarre. I'm all for letting the creative juices flow and seeing where the music can go, but some of these arrangements and vocal styles are just plain silly. In general though, these moments are limited and nearly always made up for by the end of the track, but ultimately cannot be ignored.

In the end I guess the album name "The Focusing Blur" is fairly appropriate and I for one hope the band's next output can focus and define the image that such a talented group of musicians could so obviously unleash.

Regardless of these flaws, Vintersorg never fails to keep things interesting and I'm sure I will listen to this whenever I feel the need for slightly more challenging music than the majority of the metal scene could possibly deliver.

the singer of Borknagar, it's already a fantastic resume. So i know where Borknagar's astral flavour comes from. This guys is all hooked up on the transcending complexity of the universe. He sees complexity everywhere, and in any scale, and he translate it into sound waves. Thats what im talking about baby, mad science in your grill biatch. This album's lyrics are so good that they actually catch you and makes you think. Its Borknagar's and Arcturus's little cousin but its caught up actually to this two giants of avant-gard metal. this album is juicy and unique, i love it.....

With all of the mass produced homogenous "metal" flowing into mainstream today, it's easy to say that the art of metal is way past it's peak. Of course, if MTV or FUSE is your primary source, then you'd be forgiven for thinking that way. Seeing the downward spiral of quality is depressing. Metallica, Megadeth, Fates Warning(still decent in my opinion), Iron Maiden and Judas Priest(Tim's great but it didnt work, oh well) all seem to be suffering from this phenomenon.
It seems that the artists that improve with time are ignored as a curiosity, not comforming with whats "in". There are a few out there that keep getting better. Even when you'd swear that it was impossible to get better, they do it. That is the case with this release. Vintersorg finally hit perfection with this album. The previous two were beyond awesome, but had a little maturing to do. Vocals on this one are right where they need to be, not as over the top as Spiral Generator, and the english language has improved a bit. The bass is perfect, you should never expect less having the industry's best in the lineup. Same with the drums. The complex play between the instruments make for no boring moments. No filler here. Play the album 100 times and you hear something else you hadn't before. The guitar is done well, very well. The production is the best yet, and the artwork is interesting too. It would be pointless to do a song analysis because this review would be 50 pages long.
This is by a HUGE margin my top album of 2004, possibly all time. I never thought I'd say it, but I like it more than Borknagar's 2004 effort, Epic because it didn't take a million listens for it to set in.
It's sad that so many people are missing out on music like this. Either they've never heard of it, don't like the harsh vocals or it is too complex for them. Just because it isn't thrown in your face doesn't mean it isn't any good.

I purchased Vintersorg's "The Focusing Blur" after receiving a copy of Borknagar- "Empiricism", an album that on first listen blew my mind and has only gotten better in the month and a half that I have had it. The vocals of V on the Bornagar album were just so mesmorizing and unique, a fantastic combination of brutality and melodic brilliance. Obviously, I needed to have more of Vintersorg! Based on an online recommendation of Vintersorg's solo material (supposedly more 'Progressive' than Borknagar, a genre I consider myself more a fan of than overall Black Metal), I purchased "Cosmic Genesis" and TFB online. While focusing my comments briefly on TFB, I'll say that this album does indeed contain the recordings of Vintersorg. While on 'Emp...' that simply meant amazing, here it drops down to good. I'll go on a limb and suggest that Borknagar guitarist Øystein G. Brun definitely enhanced V's output with some stellar songwriting ideas.

Here, the music basically falls into the category of 'Progressive' and by that I mean the worst aspects of it. Meaning that a band will take 1000 song ideas and cram them into a recording, not necessarily making that a 'song'. The guitars are lightweight, the songs go on with no intended direction, Bassist Steve DiGiorgio's legendary talents are buried beneath layers of lightweight and annoying keyboard saturations, making this a false 'Metal' album if I have ever heard one. The closest band I would compare this album to would be fellow swedes Pain Of Salvation, and while they have many a pompous and pretentious moment to them, they still have pulled of an overall better sound than TFB. Even the worthwile closer "Epilogue Metalogue - Sharpen Your Mind Tools" cannot save this failure. If you are looking for some real Metal then do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.

1 star.