Winter
"Into Darkness" (Future Shock, 1990)

Winter is a singular entity in the realm of extreme music, and "Into Darkness" is a singular achievement. Whether through their ability to reduce everything to scorched ash, or through their uncanny power to summon something ghostlike from the void, these New York misfits created something truly exceptional. Drawing heavily from the primordial sludge of Celtic Frost, its proto-form Hellhammer, and the apocalyptic crust of Amebix, Winter forged a juggernaut of Doom and Death that defies simple categorization.

The band’s defining trait is their glacial pacing, slow, and often slower still. But rather than drag, it mesmerizes. There’s a cadence to it, almost funereal yet strangely comforting, like a lullaby for the damned.

Winter doesn’t sound like your typical Doom Metal band. There’s no trace of the gothic longing of Katatonia, Paradise Lost, or Anathema; nor do they channel the visceral ferocity of Morbid Angel or Cannibal Corpse. This much is obvious. But then, what does Winter sound like? It’s a bit like asking whether aliens exist, a question better suited for metaphysical speculation than musical taxonomy. Comparisons have been drawn to Disembowelment, and rightly so, though even that feels only partly accurate. Like Disembowelment, Winter occupies a shadowy space between subgenres, difficult to define, yet impossible to ignore.

Many have noted that the album’s artwork perfectly encapsulates its sound: desolation, isolation, decay. The sense of finality is palpable, not merely the end of a life, but the end of all life. And amid this slow-motion collapse, they occasionally unleash bursts of punk aggression, only to retreat again into the abyssal depths. The heaviness never lets up; it only shifts form.

And then there are the vocals. John Alman’s voice is a monolith, a bedrock upon which the rest of the band firmly rests. He becomes a towering presence, part man, part mythic beast. His bass work is equally essential, thick, oppressive, resonant. While his vocal delivery draws clear inspiration from Tom G. Warrior, there’s something even more grotesque, more otherworldly about it. John sounds less like a man and more like the sound of extinction itself.

"Into Darkness" is a 46-minute descent into ruin, a meditation on despair, delusion, extinction, and the death of everything. And in a world that often feels like it’s teetering on the same edge, this album is perhaps more relevant in 2024 than it ever was in 1990.

A bleak masterpiece. An eternal winter.