Year: 2024
Label: Primitive Reaction
Rating: 7,7 / 10
WINDSWEPT is perhaps the most unpredictable project of Roman Saenko. While the basis of the music remains almost unchanged, each release approaches it from a different angle. The debut album, recorded as a result of improvisation in the studio, was a little reminiscent of the dead at that time HATE FOREST and, being rather untidy in a good way, sounded very fresh against the background of DRUDKH, whose music had already become quite professional at that time. The brilliant EP "Visionaire", which I never tire of listening to and praising, sent us back to hypnotic warm walks in the style of the great ”Forgotten Legends". The second album, "The Onlooker", turned out to be one of the weakest works of Roman, and sounded like an unsuccessful attempt to squeeze the chaotic nature of the band onto the book pages.
The brand-new ”Der eine, wahre König" combines the traditionally high speed and intensity of WINDSWEPT music with a solid cohesiveness of more meager works of Saenko. All the fragments that make up the songs are very strongly interconnected, and this is very good, since "flow" is the most important quality of any healthy musical genre. The first two tracks sound in the style of full-length WINDSWEPT albums (blast beats and guitar blizzard), only more orderly. The third track reduces the tempo by about 1/5, but the last one gives us what we always hope for from Roman: rhythmic, mostly unhurried atmospheric metal with the deepest feeling of sincere melancholy. The song "Jedes Todes Lohn" resembles not even "Visionaire" but "Handful of Stars" of DRUDKH, because in places it sounds too similar and has the same characteristic expressive bass.
But the most distinctive feature of this release is that it features two guest vocalists. The first two tracks are performed by Wintherr (PAYSAGE D'HIVER, DARKSPACE), the second two by Meilenwald (THE RUINS OF BEVERAST, ex-NAGELFAR). If you do not take into account OLD SILVER KEY, which was created for another vocalist from the very beginning, this is the first release in the history of Saenko's bands where neither him nor Thurios sing. The idea is interesting, although, in my opinion, both vocalists are not quite suitable for such music. Wintherr, in his traditional manner, shouts incomprehensibly from some hill a kilometer away from the scene of the events, and Meilenwald, on the contrary, sounds way too good: diligently and mechanically, like a true German. By the way, the language of the lyrics here is also exclusively German, and they are dedicated to Death, which is the only, true King.
As a result, we have a very good and interesting mini-album. Of course, I would like it to consist entirely of tracks similar to "Jedes Todes Lohn”, but even in this form it makes a useful contribution to the rich discography of Roman Saenko. In physical form, the release appeared in all formats on the Finnish label Primitive Reaction.
English (UK) 
Крыўская