This Mournful Dawn

Formed way back in 2006, atmospheric / depressive BM act Nordicwinter, the brainchild of Canadian musician Evillair, put out debut album "Threnody" in 2007 and then went into hibernation for about 12 – 13 years. In 2020, while the rest of the world was going into COVID-19 lockdown, Nordicwinter sprang back into action with second album "Requiem" and since then this project has never looked back, going on to record and release five more albums with "This Mournful Dawn" being the seventh and most recent album. It seems that Evillair is happiest and Nordicwinter most busy when the rest of the world is languishing in lockdown misery and boredom. With albums boasting titles like "Threnody", "Sorrow", "Desolation" and "Le dernier adieu" ("The last goodbye"), Nordicwinter sure is the cheeriest of depressive BM acts and "This Mournful Dawn" is yet another joyful and merry chapter in this project's discography.

Most tracks are very lengthy affairs with the first three songs each exceeding the ten-minute mark and preoccupied with encroaching death and the figurative / literal coming of winter and darkness. Opening track "Enshrouded by Winter" establishes Nordicwinter's modus operandi: harsh in tone, solemn and lugubrious in mood, the song proceeds at a medium-slow pace with hornet-buzzy tremolo guitar riffs, steady percussion and terrifyingly gut-wrenching raspy howls, under heavy distortion, in the background grit. Occasional clear cold synth can be heard within the storm. The entire song tends towards repetition in its riffing with maybe a short lead guitar break or a brief passage of brooding acoustic guitar in still darkness, and progresses steadily throughout its running time with, well, no sudden surprise blast-beat outbursts or anything that might take the song into another key or alternative realm of depression and darkness.

"Death's Pale Touch" and "As Twilight Fades" follow in a similar style and structure – there's not a great deal that distinguishes the first three tracks from one another, and casual listeners might even think the three songs to be parts of one overarching trilogy. Differences are to be found mainly in the details of the tracks, with some clean singing and church bell samples in "Death's Pale Touch", and "As Twilight Fades" sounding at times desolate and at other times appearing to anticipate the silence of death with oddly uplifting riffs in parts of the song. As with the other two tracks, "As Twilight Fades" also includes a brief acoustic music passage past the halfway mark to emphasise the finality of death and the pain it brings to those affected by the death of a close friend or lover.

As it turns out, fourth track "Autumn's Last Whisper", isn't much different from what's gone before structurally though there's a bit more aggression and even defiance in the surging riffs. The screaming is constant throughout, making this song very layered and dense in texture, with the result of heightening the gloom and painful emotions. The album concludes with a short instrumental that starts with solo piano and escalates quickly with violin (maybe synth-generated) and background orchestral synth and ambience into a heartfelt elegy.

Over its 40+ minutes, "This Mournful Dawn" isn't the easiest album to listen to, with tracks that tend to sound similar and not boasting very distinct riffs that would set them apart from one another. The gloom and melancholy stay throughout all five tracks and almost nothing challenges the sorrowing attitude. Though technically the music is performed well, and songs are layered well with the harsh textures that intensify the emotional pain, there's not much variety in the structure of the tracks or in their riffs and melodies. The repetition can end up more boring than serving to emphasise the album's themes and moods.

I realise that the overall mood of the album and the repetition serve to immerse listeners in a world of depression and melancholy, but the nature of the repetition and monotony makes this world perhaps more dreary than it deserves to be. It's very hard-going indeed.

My attitude towards Nordicwinter’s music has always been uncertain. I do enjoy the sound of most albums, Evillair’s desperate vocals as well as the band’s overall unusual style of DSBM close to atmospheric black metal. However, there haven’t been many individual songs that I would deem particularly remarkable on their own. For instance, "Le dernier adieu" was consistent, for the riffs were written in a similar fashion and quite atmospheric, but, aside from "La nuit", possessed no memorable melodies. "Beneath the Fleeting Light" was a pleasant surprise with the masterpieces "Hallowed Darkness" and "Into Nothingness", but the real turning point was "This Mournful Dawn", as most of its tracks are flawless DSBM pieces.

The most easily observed difference between this album and the rest of Nordicwinter’s discography is the song length and the way the tracks are arranged. While "Le dernier adieu" had medium-length songs (5-7 minutes) and "Beneath the Fleeting Light" consisted of songs of various lengths mingled with each other, "This Mournful Dawn" is a sequence of three 10-minute songs and a 7-minute one, finally concluded by a traditional for the band 3-minute piano outro. This impacts significantly the album’s flow, making the majority of it a relentless interlude-free brook of suffering.

The album’s sound has changed significantly since "Beneath the Fleeting Light", which one can tell from the new, much cleaner sound of the acoustic guitar instantly introduced at the beginning of "Enshrouded by Winter". The guitars have become more melodic and less heavy, yet retained the "grittiness" of Nordicwinter’s earlier records. The only downside of the new sound is the downplayed sound of drums, but, since the latter never played an important part in the band’s music, the change is not drastic. The vocals are excellent as always, but the quality of the album content, as mentioned above, is higher than ever. The structure of the first track is similar to that of the band’s best song, "Hallowed Darkness", since it also involves brief acoustic interludes. The song is quite depressive and keeps the listener immersed in its somber atmosphere until the end. The album’s best song, "Death's Pale Touch" possesses a late Nocturnal Depression-like spirit and a brilliant riff, epic in its sadness just like that of "We're All Better Off Dead" or "L’isolement". "As Twilight Fades" and "Autumn's Last Mournful Whisper" are as bleak as their titles, with the former possessing unusual energetic drumming and the latter – a slow-paced atmospheric passage around the middle. The piano outro titled "My Lament" with its hopeless mood serves as a perfect conclusion for the release.

So, "This Mournful Dawn" is a great DSBM album and, alongside Beyond Melancholy’s "My Last Moments of Life..." EP with its unusual scary feeling, the best 2023 release in the genre so far. A must-listen for any DSBM fan or for anyone not yet acquainted with Nordicwinter.

Originally written for metalbite.com.