For those of you that frequent the forums here, you may remember a thread about bands that "Can do no Wrong" and for me only one name came to mind, White Willow. Then, a couple of months ago when Jacob Holm-Lupo announced the forthcoming release of this album, Terminal Twilight, he also posted a 10 minute Youtube sample which got me very excited and also prompted me to re-visit the bands discography and refresh my mind on just how good they are. What I'm trying to get at here is that a new White Willow album comes with very high expectations on my part, to the point that they are one of only two bands that I place such heavy demands on the quality of the music they release. So I'm part elated and part relieved to say that White Willow have very much matched those expectations.
Anyone familiar with White Willow will know that each of their previous five albums is unique in its sound, but they each shared in a common atmosphere, that of dark melancholia but with absolute beauty, and that has held true on Terminal Twilight as well. In terms of its overall sound its probably best described as a loose blend of Sacrament and Storm Season in that it has the classic 70's symphonic sound of the former but can be very heavy like the latter. That heaviness, though, should not be confused with Metal under any circumstance. Storm Season may have been characterised by heavy guitar riffs but Terminal Twilight creates its heaviness through a blend of Lars Fredrick Frøislie's expansive keyboard sounds, Jacob Holm-Lupo's guitars and Ellen Andrea Wang's growling 5-string bass. Its a massive wall of sound with a great deal of depth and detail used to stunning effect, particularly on the dark opening track, Hawks Circle the Mountain.
And that leads me on to a great point in this albums favour, its use of dynamic range. Holm-Lupo and Frøislie have clearly spent a lot of time and effort on the production here so that you get caught up in the close, intimate feeling, quiet sections before being blown away by the full band as they storm in through the speakers. Yet it all feels so natural, the quiet sections are never too quiet and the loud parts are never too loud, striking a comfortable balance whilst still having a clearly determined difference in volume level. And that spreads over into all aspects of the albums production, all instruments are clearly audible and only the keyboards seem to dominate the mix, but then this is definitely a more keyboard oriented album than the last couple of White Willow albums have been.
Now, I doubt I'm the only one to have noticed but much of the modern Symphonic Prog produced seems to be very much "retro prog" in that it clearly harks back to the classics of the 70's without changing things too much, and that's not always a bad thing as Swedish legends Anglagard have proved (and who's drummer, Mattias Olsson, offers a superb turn on percussion here) as have sister band Wobbler (for me most notably on the medieval tinged Afterglow), but there's definitely too many soundalikes out there. Thankfully, White Willow have never been one of those, from their heavily folk influenced early albums to the Neo Prog of Signal to Noise that have always had an identity all their own, displaying their influences without getting trapped by them. On top of that they've been changing their sound constantly, and they've changed it again for Terminal Twilight. Ironically, this album is the one, of their six, that is most likely to be considered a throw-back to the 70's, largely from the way that the sound is dominated by Frøislies unashamed armada of vintage keyboards and the way that the guitars only really come to the fore for solos and acoustic passages in a manner reminiscent of many classic prog bands. It has to be said, though, that there is no mistaking Frøislies playing on this album. The style of play and sound use that he has developed, and almost exclusively uses in White Willow (and to a lesser extent in his Black Metal band In Lingua Mortua whilst almost never in Wobbler), is unique to him and he displays this talent excellently. From: https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=81245
