Wintermond - Desiderium

Name: Desiderium
Band: Wintermond
Genre: Gothic Rock
Release Date: 29th January 2010
Label: Danse Macabre Records



Introduction

The band WINTERMOND was formed in 2004 as a solo-project of founder Didic who wanted to realize his musical ideas after his last band broke-up. Soon, Gabrielle (female vocals) joined him and in this combination, they released 2 demos. With ‘Blutrot’ they even won the Sonic Seducer Band Contest in 2007/2008. After that, Luk (lead guitarist), Julian (drums) and Chris (bass) joined the band. After contracting with the Danse Macabre Label, they now released their first CD ‘Desiderium’.


Album Review

After winning the Sonic Seducer band-contest, the expectations are set really high for this young band. Let's see if they can live up to that! The CD starts with the opener ‘Deine Welt’ which begins a little too boring and too slow to really grab your attention. The vocals sound pretty tortured until the female vocals join the song. Gabrielle knows how to work with her voice and “upgrades” the song. The male vocals by Didic don't always hit the right note and remind me of Alexander Kaschte (SAMSAS TRAUM) who tends to “over-feel” his singing parts as well. ‘Deine Welt’ is probably not the best track chosen as an opener. Right now, after listening to the song, I am not interested in the rest of the CD but let's go to the second song ‘Kalte Schönheit’ hoping of some better stuff.

The second song starts way better than the first one. Stronger guitars are accompanied by her beautiful voice. The text reminds me of old gothic bands singing from bad times, death and graves. For me, it is way too prejudiced. They seem to try to fit in so badly but I don't know if this is the right way to get into the “black scene”. ‘Narbenkind’ starts with some synthesizers and a depressed guitar-based sound. Didic's voice is better now since he is not singing as high as he did in ‘Deine Welt’. Unfortunately, the combination of his and her voice isn't always as harmonious as I would like it to be. Towards the middle of the song, his voice starts whispering after both set in again. Musically, WINTERMOND aren't bad at all. The guitars are well-played and so are the other instruments. Everything fits together pretty well. Unfortunately, the voices don't really go together and so, the whole sound is broken.

Next, ‘Desiderium’, starts with a really nice combination of piano and violins which gives you a nice and warm feeling and puts you into the right mood for gothic rock. Then, Didic's voice starts and he finally finds his notes and sings pretty well. The song is a little too slow, unfortunately, and after little time, you are tending to lose interest… and so did I. ‘Geisterliebe’ reminds me of old L'ÂME IMMORTELLE since Gabrielle's voice is pretty low in this song and some party are whispered. Well, so far, this is the best song on the album. The music goes really well with the vocals. And it doesn't sound like the last songs which were pretty similar to each other. ‘Vollmond’ and ‘Feuerroter Mund’ both remind me of some well-known songs by IN EXTREMO (name-wise). The songs could basically be from any other band with any other vocalist. There is nothing special about the song. The vocals are pretty lame and so are the songs in general. What a pity.

With ‘Liebe ist Gift’, they try to be a little harder but don't really manage it and so, they relapse in their old sound which is pretty boring which is a shame because they could do so much better. The sound needs to be a little more interesting if you ask me. The next song ‘Sternenkönigin’ begins with a slow acoustic guitar compilation. Musically, the song is really nice and you can feel all the passion they put into the vocals and the sound but Didic really reaches his boundaries. ‘Verbranntes Licht’ finally gets a little harder and at a moment's notice they are way better than before. The vocals match, the guitars are great and the whole song finally sounds like something I would actually remember. So, there is potential! The last song ‘Für die Ewigkeit’ reminds me of SAMSAS TRAUM again. The sound is pretty similar and so are the vocals. During the chorus, you can definitely hear that Didic's voice is not made for the high notes. It actually hurts my ears. He does hit the note but they he “tortures” himself to get to it is so painful. Let's hope he works on that.


Conclusion:

WINTERMOND is a band with great potential but they need to work on their vocals. The instruments are played really well but the sound is to boring. It is really capable of improvement. Let's wait for the next CD and hope for the best!


Tracklist