Windir

Valfar, 15, forms Windir, a group that will remain a one-man band for 6 years. In solo he composes 2 albums. Soknaldar in 1997, which will lay the ingredients of an extremely rich and fresh music. This salvatrice music, sublimating the listener, holds its main features of a very consistent overall adjustment. Thus, very inspired heavy melodies on lead guitar can intertwine with classic black guitars, a powerful blast beat, and to tablecloths of keyboards seeking their influences in pop, prog and other fields to a thousand of the black, all highlighted by a hateful and yet so torn song. Windir offers a music oscillating between viking metal and black symphonic, but the markers that each one can have on each of these styles will not suffice to make an idea other than by throwing an ear on one of the discs of the formation. Valfar's music actually reaches (and already) its maturity on the following album: Arntor (1999). All the ingredients in the first opus are here, but the frontman took some bottle. While Soknaldar could suffer from a lack of overall cohesion, Arntor is a model of assurance and audacity in terms of chains and ideas. Viking songs are much more used here than on the first opus, just like folk passages: Valfar, a multi-instrumentalist, tries here the accordion and the flute, which mingled with the rest offer very epic, medieval and heroic passages. This record reveals to the Norwegian scene the talent of the young Valfar, to such an extent that his music, so unique, will be called "Sognametal" (the man being from the village of Sogdnal). It should be noted, moreover, that the texts of the group are for many people written in "Soagnamaol", an ancestral dialect of this region. This recognition allows Windir to become a real group, when members of the Ulcus group join Valfar, accompanied by his friend of always Hvàll, who will help him in the compositions. The formation can finally give representations, which there too will be as rare as apreciated. Hvàll's musical contribution allows Windir to make further progress for his following album: 1184 (2001). Even more mural, the music progresses further in its melodies so characteristic and the alternation of its atmospheres supported by a keyboard always as creative and away from the clichés of the black metal symphonic. The background is still there, the shape is sublimated, and Windir reaches here peaks in his art. The next album, Likferd (2003), still with the same recipe (the discography of the band, you will have noticed, is relatively weak in significant evolutions), will allow the band to fight an international reputation, and it is to date its biggest success. It is also the darkest: the atmospheres are close to the first album, more crude, less rich, but all equally grandiose. Around ten concerts will follow, including a tour (2 concerts) in the United States. It is at its peak that Windir undergoes an end as sudden as it is unconscious. In January 2004, while the band was recording its fifth studio album, Valfar was lost in a snowstorm and perished in the mountains of Sokndal in cold transit. Very marked by this disappearance, the other members of the group decide that they can no longer continue without him. That's how before an artistic fall, was there any, Windir died. No false steps in the work of the 5 black metaleux, a composer of early and innovative genius, a rarity giving rise to desire (the group has given only 15 performances with its line-up complete to date), all of the ingredients relegating Windir to the rank of legends of Norwegian black metal. Last tributes of the band has its master, a best of compilation, entitled "Valfar, Ein Windir", containing unreleased titles (including titles that should have appeared on the band's 5th album), recaptures by several Norwegian bands, live performances and a farewell concert (immortated on the Sognametal DVD) in Oslo on September 3, 2004 (day Valfar would have been 26 years old), with a song performed by Sture, guitarist, and Vegard, elder brother of the deceased. The Sognametal DVD from this last concert contains the whole show, served by an impeccable sound, and which despite the rather light realization, leaves a remarkable impression. The compositions are provided with brilliance (but is this the essential?), and the setlist is judiciously chosen. The ambiance of this concert is very strange: to see contrast the glacial faces of a blackish parterre and the emotion of a lost loved one is quite incredible and unusual. The evening concludes solemnly with a slideshow showing private photos of the band and in particular of...Valfar, before the band started its last songs before disappearing, the very heroic and symbolic "Arntor, ein Windir". The DVD also contains many bonuses, private pictures, videos toured during studio recordings, before concerts, during the life of the members, during shows in Norway, all to pay tribute to Valfar. Since albums are naturally much more suitable for discovering the band, this DVD will still be absolutely indispensable to any great amateur of the above-mentioned work, as will the tribute compilation. Thus perished a group at the top of his art, and thus remained as hero Valfar, little genius of the Sogndal mountains.