Winter Solstice are a five-piece metalcore band from Lynchburg, Virginia, who have been together since the year 2000. The band bio states they make hardcore influenced thrash metal, which just means metalcore in nicer words. The album’s title ‘The Fall Of Rome’ is quite beautiful, and so is the name Winter Solstice. Add to that, they are currently signed to Metal-freakin’-Blade, and you’ll have pretty good expectations of these guys. However, the metalcore-genre is saturated with hundreds of copycats and formalaicly correct, completely unoriginal bands that just go from one standard issue single-chord breakdown to the next, so to say I was expecting the reinvention of the wheel? No… And indeed, no.

From the first song on, you hear that this music is not very original, which I find a letdown, given the very interesting subject matter, which should provide enough inspiration to create something new and fascinating. That doesn’t mean the album is bad, certainly not. Almost in every song there are interesting, smart touches in the riffage, which makes listening to this CD worthwhile. For instance the start of song two ‘Calibrate The Virus’ is a very catchy, smart, beautiful riff. Thereafter however, there’s one of the all too familiar standard metalcore parts and you’re just waiting for the next smart hook, the next subtle change in the instrumentals, which takes a long time. It is only towards the end they manage to retrieve the riff that started the song, everything in between has been very forgettable.

I’ve chosen the song ‘Calibrate The Virus’ to explain ‘The Fall Of Rome’, because it’s what most of the songs are like; they have brilliant parts, but too many weak spots, filled with your everyday metalcore brutality. In every song there are examples of the band’s lingering brilliance, but never do they fully cash-in on the mastery.
An important factor in the potential not reached are the vocals. Almost all the time the same gutgrunt that hovers between high- and low-pitched. It is not very listenable and the man doesn’t know the art of shutting the fuck up now and then. A couple of times on the record, attempts are made to liven it up a little, by shortly just talking in stead of screaming, and on ‘Courtesy Bow’ there is another voice just talking for a bit. Allright touches, but insufficiently applied, and always followed by vocal slaughter.
A very smart point is ‘The Fall Of Rome’, the piano driven instrumental title song to break the album in half.

All in all I wouldn’t condemn Winter Solstice just yet. This album is decent, but thousands of albums are, so you need a defining quality. It is not to be heard on this CD. They need to tell their singer to shut up once in a while (or they should just cut the feed) to provide necessary instrumental space, they need more vocal variety and they need to let creative instrumental juices flow and really decrease the playing of standard riffs. If they do that, one of the best metalcore albums ever, will be the next Winter Solstice.