I am also looking forward to Jari's new album "Time", his work with Wintersun and Ensiferum is fantasic imo. I get the imression that he might be a bit of a perfectionist, which is most likely the reason for the contiual delays on the new release, should be worht the wait.

I hope he doesn't drown the new album in keyboards.

Well, that sucks, because he says he plans to throw the album into a large pot of keyboards after he is done with it.

The early Ensiferum stuff is very good and darned enjoyable, but Wintersun is overlong and overly... Something, the word's not coming to me but songs go on for two minutes more than they should every song. Just not an exciting album I'm afraid.

The guy's good but come on...

The album grew on me big time. I at first thought the first two tracks were the best and the others were too..... something, as you said. However, after a number of listens, the other songs opened up to me one by one. Now, it is my most listened to album and I adore every song on it. Not for everybody but I feel it is a truly special album.

I really like your signature.

Wintersun has a few good tracks but Jari's grandiose writing is overly excessive and prevents anything from being memorable. And Ensiferum? Don't make me laugh at their generic and filler material! Better compositional work comes from my colon every morning (and it at least sounds different every time!). Just because he is the master behind the bulk and slightly above average compositional work definitely does not deem him legend or even merely revolutionary compared to true epitomes of those words like Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven or any other great composers who truly revolutionized music. At most, Jari will release another album and be forgotten as the years go on sans for the teenage fan boys who will continue to worship his abilities as godly, timeless, and flawless. To those, I say - you will grow up and realize there is a vast sea of music yet to be experienced...

I couldn't take the Wintersun s/t for any more than two spins. Encouraged by that I've only purchased Victory Songs which by the way is entertaining.

i love wintersun and ensiferum but they are not examples of what i consider revolutionary music, to make such statement is like me saying that jesper stromblad reinvented the way of play guitar just because i like in flames, it would be not a responsable behaviour

Beyond the Dark Sun is barely over 2 minutes, so that song should basically not exist? It's probably one of the better songs on the album to. And that's saying something since each song on the album is fucking brilliant.

He's saying that the songs are way longer than they should be, not that they should not exist. 'Beyond the Dark Sun' among a few others ('Winter Madness', "Beautiful Death', and 'Battle Against Time') are good, but the rest of the album is filler material in my opinion. Plus, I really hate the album cover.

Seeing Starchild not mentioned I'm assuming you categorize that with the "laughable filler material"... I find that extremely unbelievable. Starchild is such a killer song, especially when Jari takes over with the vocals and rips that amazing scream. That's incredulous to call it laughable filler.

How is my statement incredulous? We are no experts, these are all just opinions ! I cannot get into his 'epic', or cornier material; simple as that. Don't let my opinion hinder you though, jeez!

Do yourself a favor and get the Ensiferum S/T.

lol, he has done nothing revolutionary but he is a brilliant musician. Cant wait for Time next year (at least I hope).

I think he was better off with Ensiferum though, their self entitled is probably my favourite CD of all time.

Fuck yeah!

I really despise Jari as a musician. Come to think of it, there's not many (maybe none) metal musicians I despise as much as him. That really prevents me from getting Ensiferum's earlier products. I will give Victory Songs a few more spins and some time before I'll decide if I will venture into their Mäenpää-era records.

They really aren't that great, they're solid, but that's about it.

Feel free to provide your reasons why any time now...

Expectations are so high...I really hope Time proves to be worth it.

Agree. In fact, Sleeping Stars and Death And The Healing - both apparently "laughable filler material" - are two of my favourite tracks on the album.

Same here. Any great album of that sort is bound to have people pissed off about it just because of its structure.

And it shows in the fact that you didn't refer to the Wintersun debut as a rehash of said bands. I don't have a problem with people who think that the album isn't revolutionary or terribly original, but the statement that 666head made was so far removed from reality that I was curious to hear how many songs he's heard from these bands aside from what might be still on their myspace pages. I think that the album is more of a quality album than an originality based album, while the latter may be more true of the Ensiferum debut in various respects.

Anyway, I'm not going any further into the whole fanboy vs. hater thing either, so I'll leave the debate to those with more interest in doing so.

I'm fairly certain that a majority of the ridiculous praise he gets comes from people who likely just got into gothenburg and melo-death or still listen to the stuff quite often. I could see myself saying a lot of the same stuff about Ensiferum and Wintersun back when I thought melo-death was the greatest thing ever. That's not to say that there aren't exceptions to this as I'm sure there are a lot of people who like all kinds of stuff and think Wintersun is great but I still get this feeling that he's got a nice portion of his fanbase that's a lot similar to that of Alexi Laiho's.

The Wintersun album was my all time faorite album for like 2 or 3 years. It's still one of my favorites. That album was there during some really shitty times in my life and the songs almost spoke to me on a personal level. As for his Ensiferum years, I like those albums (the song Lost in Despair is my favorite) but I find Victory Songs to be alot better. But in any case, I think Jari is one of the best musicians of all time in metal.

Wintersun's second album is the Duke Nukem Forever of metal.

Congratulations! You're only about 40 posts late in making that joke!

Ah, well, maybe next time.

Are you saying that the opinions of people who like Alexi Laiho are meaningless?

No, he's saying that he has an immense popularity with the hot topic kids who think The Haunted is thrash and that In Flames wasn't good until Reroute. People who are mainly new to metal. Now, I'm not new to metal, and I like Alexi Laiho, but not nearly to the level that so many off his tosser praise him to.

While I completely agree with you, I think it is also a generalization. You are a fan of Laiho's, as am I, and don't think that my (or your) opinion of Winterun should mean less since I like Alexi Laiho... just my opinion though....

It's not the fact that they like Alexi Laiho which makes their opinions "invalid". The argument being made (to my understanding) is that many of Jari's fans are kids who are new to metal. Kids who have not yet had the time to fully explore metal and listen to a respectable number of bands to have a good perspective, when it comes to ranking a band or member's skill and quality. Alexi was merely used as an example of one of those people who are worshipped by hordes of kids as being "teh greatest" simply because he's all they have really listened to. What I think NumenDivinum was saying, is that Jari is one of these musicians who are heard by some kid, new to metal, and then proceeds idolise him as a god of some sort, almost solely due to that fact that (once again), they have never really listened to anything else.

However, I don't think music experience comes into play when looking at Jari's work. You could have listened to every song ever written and I feel Jari would still rank highly in regards to musical skill and composition.

I didn't say that Laiho fan's opinions don't matter. I was saying that Children of Bodom has a portion of their fanbase that likes to deify Laiho and give him far more praise than he deserves.

I don't see how that argument would be valid. Children of Bodom and Wintersun could be the ONLY bands I have ever heard, and still, just because I have only heard their material, that doesn't make my opinion of Wintersun any less worthy.

I don't see how vast-metal-listening experience trumps non-vast-metal-listening experience in terms of opinions of what is and isn't good. It has and will always be an opinion.

OK, I guess I can see what you're saying...

sorry for jumping to conclusions...

Personally I can't stand a vast majority of Gothenburg's melodeath scene, most of the melodic death bands I do like are pretty far removed from what Jari does, and the ones I do like are seen as more of a power metal style like Skyfire and Kalmah. Anyway, Wintersun could probably be compared to Skyfire's "Timeless Departure", but I'm not seeing a hell of a lot of similarities to Alexi Laiho other than that Jari occasionally uses the same Yngwie styled sweep picking that a whole bunch of lead players have used going back to the mid-80s.



A lot of those same people, who I personally don't like much either, praise Black Sabbath's early Ozzy works with about the same fervor. Would his assertion prove true with "Paranoid" or "Master Of Reality" being overrated albums? Seriously though, who cares what a bunch of newbies/poseurs think about a metal band?

The comparison was intended to be only about their fanbase's. They're obviously a bit different from each other but they share some superficial things that still make them both popular among the melo-death crowd. All it take is the catchy melo-death riffs that they both have and the use of both clean and harsh vocals. That stuff appeals to people who haven't been "desensitized" to more extreme metal yet. There's nothing wrong with that at all but it's the way I see things happening and in my case that's exactly how it happened for me. I got into metal thanks to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest but I didn't start listening to death metal stuff until I found melodic death and it helped ease me in.



Nobody cares, if by "cares" you mean that someones offended by it or it pissed off or something like that. It's just an observation. We are here for discussion you know.

You guys need to re-listen. The longer songs are the best on the album. Sadness and Hate is absolutely killer, as is BAT.

What does everyone have against melodic death anyway?! some of the best metal bands play melodic death.

At The Gates and Kalmah anyone?

And I have not been "sensitised" in any way, I still listen to death and black metal.

I hate most melodeath and I like Ensiferum/Wintersun. And I agree with Holocaust about the longer songs. The first song of the Wintersun album is filler in my opinion, it's the radio hit meant to be flashy and showy without much substance.