Reflections of the I

This album is perfection of soundwaves. Winds has the right idea on this album that not all powerful metal has to be loud and fist raising. Carl August Tideman (formerly of Arcturus) displays his amazing neoclassical stylings on this album. Jan Axel Von Bloomberg (of Mayhem) shows that he can play any style. The rest of the band also excels at their respective instruments.
To give you an idea of what Winds is about, try to imagine the most emotional metal song you can think of. Slow it down, add amazing piano pieces, and a fine soothing voice. The music is, suffice to say, quiet. Mucisians who are known for belting out satanic, blasphemous, and heavy music sure know how to lay down a soft one. The music is not soft in the sense of today's radio music, but rather soft to the ears. Every piece fits together perfectly. Soft to the ears because it is not loud, distorted, or anthemic. The music is heavy in that it's very emotionally played and one can hear the songs as a heavier version. This music simply has to be heard to be believed. An impressive effort. A higher score would have been alotted but the production could have been better. It seems, at points, it takes repeated listens to hear something correctly. It does not detract from the music itself, but if you are a guitar player for instance, it takes a while to pick out all of the subtleties in the music.
Recommend for fans of all metal. Also recommend to fans of the member's other bands. Warning: it is not black metal, it is not death metal, rather it is soft metal with progressive and neoclassical overtones. By far on of metal's best releases in a long time.

This is an AMAZING album. I have the version which includes the Of Entity and Mind EP all on one CD, 16 songs of pure melodic brilliance. This is definitly, overall, the best CD I own. Hellhammer's name originally attracted me to this band, and after hearing his wonderful performance, it would be difficult not to include him as one of the world's greatest musicians. Lars Eric Si, who I understand is also in Khold, delivers wonderfully with his sorrow-ridden clean vocals, and Carl August Tiddeman, whom I have enjoyed through Arcturus, plays perfectly in his lead guitarist role. Andy Winter is the only otherwise uncredited member, though I saw one report that stated he was once a concert pianist, which I am unsure of. Judging from the keys he plays on this album, I would say he'd make a great concert pianst if the report is true. The good folks who play session strings for Winds on this album also deserve immense credit, if not for them this music wouldn't nearly be the same. Arcturus dabbles in this style, and I would like to someday see Garm (or Trickster G) do vocals for Winds rather than Lars. The follow-up LP to this album is also VERY impressive, and I have to agree with one of my fellow reviewers that if there were ever a Norwegian super-group, this is most assuredly it. Get this CD however you can, and savor the beauty of Winds.

This album is great for fans of neo-classical metal, or music fans just looking for some "easy-listening" metal. The production on here is very soft, with the drums being very prominent, which is not as bad thing as Jon Axel Von Blomberg(AKA Hellhammer) in behind the set here. His drumming on this album focuses more on creating interesting rhythms, rather than high-speed destruction ala Mayhem and Arcturus, though that's not to say the drumming here is slow. Blomberg still finds ways to mix in his signature style of drumming into the music. Another one-time Arcturus god playing in this bad is Carl August Tidemann, the guitarist. Tidemann plays technical riffs, and plays neo-classical solo's everywhere. My only gripe about the solo's is that although most of the time the solo's fit, when the solo's start going all over the place during a slow moment of the song is just well.....not right. The vocalist reminds me of James LaBrie of Dream Theater fame, only not as high-pitched. The vocalist tries, but sometimes, his vocals are bland and unemotive. The string section here would be the highlight of the band, along with the drumming. The orchestra fits in with the music perfectly, and the instrumental tracks are a joy to listen to, just to listen to the interplay of the keyboards, orchestra, and drums.

Just about the only down-side to this album is that although many will probably like it, the general consensus is that this album is boring if you aren't really in the mood, as stated before in another review.

Album Highlights - Realization, Passion's Quest, Premonition

This band was a pretty good idea, but you really have to be in the mood to listen to music like this. Here we have some fine metal musicians teaming up with an orchestra to make some, of course, very classical sounding metal. It works out pretty well, but I think they could have done alot more with it than they did.

All the songs sound pretty much the same, so I'm no going to bother talking about individual ones. Pretty much every song starts with some stringed insturments or a piano playing, and then the guitars kick in. It all comes together pretty well and sounds really nice, but the only problem is if you're looking to do some headbanging or anything of the sort, you will get bored real fast. The soloing here is pretty damn good, sounds very similar to Yngwie's style. The singing is very generic sounding and kind of boring. They should probably have gotten someone with a little more energy or something, and while they were at it, probably should have pumped some energy into at least a few of the song. It is good however, for when you just want to chill out and relax, and listen to some inspiring classical metal type stuff. Unfortunately I rarely want to do that, but hey, it at least has a purpose. Whether or not you ever get that urge, should decide for you whether or not you need this album.