Up and Coming on the world stage - Wintersun

Wintersun – Jari Maenpaa

Many talented musicians seeking glory, honor, and babes populate the heavy metal world, but few will ever achieve multimillion record sales. The bands that do achieve this are often viewed as sellouts and big sacks of poop, and often, that is a correct assessment. So to say up and coming to me implies that a band simply doesn’t have a recognizable following yet.
Wintersun is the side project of the respected musician, Jari Maenpaa who made his name and voice and awesome riffage known through the Finnish folk metal band Ensiferum (another favorite of mine). The Viking theme of Ensiferum incorporated folk melodies and medieval musical concepts into a double bass, gallop rythmn, dirty vocal metal style that quickly gained attention (in Finland). All the while Jari was shredding away, he was also singing, and the live concerts were a sight to behold. Ultimately however, after 3 successful albums, Jari departed the band and decided to record his solo projects that were not related to Vikings, but still cool. So cool in fact, that the band Wintersun, while only having one album, was able to win over all the fans of Ensiferum, plus everyone who couldn’t associate with Vikings as well as the Finnish. Wintersun’s style has been described as folk metal (thanks to critics extensive knowledge of Ensiferum) and black metal (a genre that doesn’t sound like folk metal at all), but ultimately the correct term would probably be Melodic Black Metal. Recording the entire album by himself, with the help of a guest drummer, Jari was able to create a tremendously depressing album that expressed everything that Ensiferum didn’t allow him to expand on. With rhythm guitar, lead guitar, dozen keyboard layers, and multiple vocals tracks all recorded and mixed by himself, Jari Maenpaa has indicated to the metal world that he wished to make himself a legend.
But due to financial constraints and the lack of actual band members, Wintersun didn’t take off like it deserved. Since the release of Winter Madness (the first album) the band has picked up a bass player and rhythm guitar player, and the guest drummer liked the project so much that he gave up his membership in his previous successful band. The approaching album Time expands on themes that poets and fucked up depressed fiction writers have trouble expounding on, but it also has been in development for more than 4 years.
The amount of time that it is taking implies that perfection will be shown, both musically and lyrically, and with new members, this legend with one album will become a legend with multiple albums and thus destroy the world. I expect Wintersun will become very popular internationally and encourage musicians to learn some Audio Tech. A link to a ridiculous live performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nE91FtR0OQ&feature=related