Breaths of Elder Dawns

I have really enjoyed this band's past few albums, this one less so. Windfaerer are all about epic, melodic Black Metal with folk flourishes and violins adding melody, but this time they seem to have drifted off what they are really good at. The mix this time out favors the vocals to a bewildering degree, as vocals have never really been a selling point of this band. The guitar sound is weak and pushed into the background, so this just sounds weaker and less metallic than their last album. The music here is not crap, and there are a lot of good melodic ideas flowing through these compositions, but the over-loud vocals barfing all over everything makes the good stuff hard to hear. I am glad to see this band trying different sounds, but this is not the way to go.