Vintersea is an American metal band from Portland, Oregon, formed in 2014 under the name Asterion.

History

Guitarist Riley Nix and drummer Jeremy Spencer have been playing together since their high school days. As their previous band broke up, they placed an ad on Craigslist in the summer of 2014. Shortly thereafter, singer Avienne Low, who had just relocated to the United States from Malaysia, became aware of the two and joined them. Another member was guitarist Jorma Spaziano, who had moved to Oregon from the east coast of the United States. The first rehearsals and the first performances under the name Asterion took place together. The band would later change its name to Vintersea.^[1]

In late 2019, after self-releasing their EP Constellations and debut album The Gravity of Fall within the prior five years, the group signed a record deal with M-Theory Audio, the same year their second album Illuminated was released. The label was introduced to the band two years earlier through a gig in Sacramento, California, brought together by a recommendation from the group Graveshadow, who was also signed to this label. After the album's release, appearances followed with The Browning, among others.^[1]

The band will release their third album Woven into Ashes on May 5, 2023.^[2][3][4]

Musical style and influences

According to thecirclepit.com, on The Gravity of Fall, the band tries to render appealing landscape imagery in song form, combining elements of progressive metal, black metal, death metal, and post-metal. In the songs, the group creates majestic and massive soundscapes.^[5] Sebastian Schilling from Rock Hard noticed influences from post-metal, death metal, and black metal while listening to Illuminated. The band's sound and appearance would position them in modern progressive metal, combining "fat blast passages" with "fragile acoustic parts" and "approaches of Devin Townsend-like bombast". A notable characteristic is Low's pleasant singing voice, where she dominates growls and screams. Overall, the music is recommended by Schilling for fans of Ihsahn, Devin Townsend, and Periphery.^[6] In the following issue, Andreas Schiffmann wrote that the second album, in contrast to its predecessor, was no longer written solely by Riley Nix. In an interview with him, Avienne Low stated that Illuminated is about "a group of conditioned people who live in isolation and believe they are in paradise while being fed propaganda and feigned security".^[7]

Influences include Linkin Park, The Chariot, Rolo Tomassi, Ne Obliviscaris, and Periphery.^[8]

Discography

References