We’ve been following the momentous progress of the New Jersey black/folk metal band Windfaerer since early days, sprinkling our coverage (which began almost exactly nine years ago) with music premieres and increasingly elaborate and enthusiastic reviews of their accomplishments. It was thus a tremendous thrill to discover that Avantgarde Music would be releasing their new album, Breaths of Endless Dawns, and a no-brainer for us to accept the opportunity to premiere the new album’s first single — “Astral Tears“.

The band’s last album, 2018’s Alma, was (as we wrote) “a work of grand ambition and true passion, the band persistently driving themselves to unabashedly tug at the listener’s heartstrings and also to send the heart soaring and the mind spinning toward mythic heights.” The music was multifaceted, richly patterned, emotionally intense, and thoroughly immersive, creating moods that were dark and depressive, wrenchingly anguished, and vibrantly defiant. The songs become almost heart-stopping in their grandeur and explosive power, though every sensation of triumph was still edged with melancholy, as if modulated by the remembrance of loss.

Many of those same qualities are again on display in this new record, but the experience is, if anything, even more rich in its textures and moods, even more enthralling (and wrenching), and perhaps even more immense in its sheer unbridled power. Continue reading »