Album Review: Wintersleep — New Inheritors

Wintersleep

New Inheritors
EMI

It's difficult for me to sum up exactly how to feel about New Inheritors, Wintersleep's fourth studio album. Generally speaking, I found the album to rise and fall as I listened to it. The opening track, "Experience the Jewel," is an anthem — a bold, powerful musical expression featuring a symphony and an energetic guitar solo. That song alone is undoubtedly some of the band's best work.

Unfortunately, this leads into several tracks that can be best described as "album songs." They're easy to listen to and fill out the album nicely, but feature simplistic songwriting with repetitive lyrics and are really nothing all that exciting on their own. Ultimately the emotion and energy are re-introduced to the album later as it begins to build once again with songs such as "Mausoleum" and "Baltic" conclude the album with more symphonic tracks and intricate rhythms.

It seems that the band was not consciously writing an album when they created it, but rather creating a collection of individual songs. New Inheritors feels more like several amazing singles that highlight all of the band's songwriting strengths but falls short as a complete album.