Winterfylleth – The Unyielding Season
Release Date: 27th March 2026
Label: Napalm
Bandcamp
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal
FFO: Dissection, Emperor, Watain.
Review By: Jeff Finch
It takes a very special band to do what Winterfylleth did: turn me into a relative super-fan after getting just a taste of their discography with album-of-the-year candidate The Imperious Horizon, a black metal album that wowed as it walloped. Along the same lines, there’s something almost overwhelming about The Unyielding Season and, again, not just in volume or speed, but in the way it completely engulfs the listener. This listener might never know how they do it, but The Imperious Horizon felt like a cold album, and now The Unyielding Season just feels like it’s yanking the sweat from your glands. This is Winterfylleth at their most ferocious but also their most deliberate. The tremolo riffs cut, slicing clean through a storm of blast beats that feel like they’re on the verge of outrunning themselves. Tracks like A Hollow Existence and the title piece do little to prepare listeners, surging forward, relentlessly, as if being chased by something just out of reach and dragging the listener along with them.
What the band has shown themselves to be masters of is controlling all the chaos. These tracks are so goddamn heavy it feels as if the notes are just going to collapse from their weight, but the band doesn’t allow that, no. But what really sticks with me is how they control that chaos. Just when everything has reached the point of no return, they pull back, introducing these fragile acoustic passages that feel like stepping into open air after being buried. In Ashen Wake is a perfect example of that balance. Beauty doesn’t merely act as a contrast to heaviness, rather, the two lie on the same spectrum. The atmosphere here is dense, suffocating, and so tangible it could be sliced open, but it’s never empty. The atmosphere here is used for specific purposes, longing and reflection being the main thematic aspects.
Musically speaking, the riffs themselves are on another level. There’s a sharpness and clarity to them that makes even the most chaotic moments feel intentional. You get these stretches where everything locks into a hypnotic groove before exploding back into that wall of sound. It’s that push and pull that gives the album its identity. Songs like the aforementioned In Ashen Wake and even Unspoken Elegy present themselves as living entities, the songs constantly evolving and the band not once settling, always on the hunt for something bigger, something more.
As with The Imperious Horizon, this album is not just immersive; it is all-consuming. There’s this epic, grand scale to everything, even the acoustic interludes, but never does it feel cheesy or ill-envisioned. Every element, from the pacing to the layering, is working toward something greater than the sum of its parts, with more still buried beneath the surface.
(5 / 5)
