dungeon synth / ambient
Westward is an album released in January, by Serbian medieval black dungeon synth project Stronghold Guardian. Almost forty minutes long, the record has eleven tracks: 1)At the Citadel; 2)Horsemen's Folk; 3)Nighthold; 4)Westward; 5)Grey Mountains; 6)The Lands Across the Sea; 7)Winterealm; 8)Hero of the Ages; 9)The Hidden Kingdom; 10)Anthem of Valor; 11)East is Where Our Hearts Are; with glorious, passionate and sensational melodies, that breathes and exhales the perfect convergence between fantasy and history in all tonalities of its formidable and iridescent harmonies, Westward reveals itself to be a splendorous album from the beginning, delivering all the correct elements expected from the genre, with such strength, mordacity and authenticity, that you literally cannot believe in the grandiosity of the work that you are contemplating.
With a dispersive and salutary style that navigates between the spaces of nostalgia and rapture – reminiscent of the noble chivalries full of bravery and honor from crowns and monarchies long gone –, the perfect balance between soft cantilenas and more dispersive graceful liturgies situates the creative deliverance of this work in the placid cosmogonies of a sensible perception of artistry, that interweaves the lyrical and epic elements of the music in a sequence of poetic and elegant rhapsodies, which definitely rescues the past and brings it back to life, in such a graceful consistence, that its impossible to measure precisely the scale of the artist’s splendorous audacity and technical competence.
Although the background harmonies are simple, the evocative and beautiful melodies framed by the sensibilities of the work displays a vigorous essence that seems inherent to the nature of the genre. With delightful harmonious possibilities that engraves in the twilight of its stylistic proclivities the technical ordinances of the artist’s most preponderant qualities, even in its apparently ordinary passages, Westward delivers a graceful, pungent and cohesive body of work, that captures in the arduous fragrances of its wonderful symphonies the everlasting brilliance of a truly original and splendid creativity.
With the reflexive grace of a lucid and expansive glory, sidelined by the renitent auspices of a solitary, but heroic gloom perpetually adorned by the omniscient shadow of melancholic and growling black metal vocals, the general anatomy of the music – as well as everything that you hear in this majestic album – departs from a mosaic of inspirational possibilities, that rapidly evolves to become a powerful demonstration of inventive and lucid originality. With its genuine strength and splendor, Westward consecrates itself as a magnificent rhapsody of vivacious tenderness and discreet, marvelously dilapidated symphonies, sometimes delivered in a quasi-minimalist fragmentary scale. Definitely, Stronghold Guardian has conceived this album as one of the most formidable and quintessential works in the history of medieval ambient music.
Wagner
With a dispersive and salutary style that navigates between the spaces of nostalgia and rapture – reminiscent of the noble chivalries full of bravery and honor from crowns and monarchies long gone –, the perfect balance between soft cantilenas and more dispersive graceful liturgies situates the creative deliverance of this work in the placid cosmogonies of a sensible perception of artistry, that interweaves the lyrical and epic elements of the music in a sequence of poetic and elegant rhapsodies, which definitely rescues the past and brings it back to life, in such a graceful consistence, that its impossible to measure precisely the scale of the artist’s splendorous audacity and technical competence.
Although the background harmonies are simple, the evocative and beautiful melodies framed by the sensibilities of the work displays a vigorous essence that seems inherent to the nature of the genre. With delightful harmonious possibilities that engraves in the twilight of its stylistic proclivities the technical ordinances of the artist’s most preponderant qualities, even in its apparently ordinary passages, Westward delivers a graceful, pungent and cohesive body of work, that captures in the arduous fragrances of its wonderful symphonies the everlasting brilliance of a truly original and splendid creativity.
With the reflexive grace of a lucid and expansive glory, sidelined by the renitent auspices of a solitary, but heroic gloom perpetually adorned by the omniscient shadow of melancholic and growling black metal vocals, the general anatomy of the music – as well as everything that you hear in this majestic album – departs from a mosaic of inspirational possibilities, that rapidly evolves to become a powerful demonstration of inventive and lucid originality. With its genuine strength and splendor, Westward consecrates itself as a magnificent rhapsody of vivacious tenderness and discreet, marvelously dilapidated symphonies, sometimes delivered in a quasi-minimalist fragmentary scale. Definitely, Stronghold Guardian has conceived this album as one of the most formidable and quintessential works in the history of medieval ambient music.
Wagner
