When you name your album EGO, you leave subtlety behind. The listener dropped straight into the internal war room. London’s Winterblind deliver a record that skips theatrics and avoids any reach for conceptual applause. They dive headfirst into the molten center of human fragility, carving a path without waiting for approval.

Let’s start with the obvious: this album stays far from politics. It avoids institutions, skips slogans, and leaves moral lessons aside. Winterblind move in a different direction. EGO turns inward. It explores fracture — internal, psychological, even spiritual. The music spins inside self-awareness and ego death with the intensity of someone fully immersed in the process. The listener meets the wreckage of self-confrontation head-on, and the band holds them there deliberately.

Winterblind, for those unfamiliar, have shaped their sound since 2010 in London. Their music lives on the edge of chaos — a progressive metal palette soaked in grit, blood, and sudden bursts of melodic clarity. Their work sidesteps genre expectations entirely. Technical death, hardcore, post-metal, mathcore — all appear as raw tools.

Fabian Villarroel-Benitez belts out lyrics that dig deep, excavating truths we usually prefer buried, while Felix De Rycker keeps a disciplined, yet ferocious pace behind the drum kit, creating a rhythm section that locks in like a pair of clenched fists. Jan Kennes’ bass rumbles beneath the surface, felt more than heard, and guitars… Nathaniel Mon Père and Thierry Wijckmans craft a sonic web that feels both intricate, like barbed wire carefully twisted into elaborate patterns, sharp but beautiful in its twisted complexity. At certain moments, the playing erupts into something far beyond melody—it screams. The guitar tone rips through the mix with such intensity it barely feels like an instrument anymore. It howls, it claws, it lashes out. You start to wonder if a guitar can actually scream—and with these two, the answer comes loud and clear.

‘EGO’ is six tightly wound tracks – but what it lacks in length, it makes up in sheer density. Each moment is loaded with emotional tension, riffs weighted with meaning, rhythmic shift reflecting internal struggles most bands skim over or drown in excess. Winterblind take these internal conflicts and turn them into a musical form that hits with devastating authenticity. They skip political slogans and banners of false rebellion, turning intensity inward—toward the self, dissecting ego, fragility, pain, and the inescapable uncertainty of human existence.

It’s fascinating, really—here we have a metal album with enough aggression to start a riot, yet it chooses reflection over outrage, acceptance over denial. Winterblind seem less interested in rallying the masses than in sitting them down and demanding brutal honesty.

The game Winterblind plays with complex rhythms and textures instantly reimagines familiar material — the sound in “Alleen Mor Steirve” sheds its skin and emerges raw and unfiltered. Even the most seasoned rock listener will catch something they’ve been missing for a long time — that deep, textured sonic layer that’s been absent from the broader rock landscape.

And holy hell, the vocals? Fabian Villarroel‐Benitez sounds absolutely sick. Like some ancient force cracked open inside his chest and started screaming through him. His delivery lands with raw force—direct, focused, relentless. Lines slash through the mix, charged with fury and grit, tearing open space with every breath. It’s chaos with purpose, pressure with teeth, a full-body blow from the mic to the gut.

“I AM ME” leans into darker, more theatrical metal territory. The band descends into low, hypnotic tones, channeling a sense of suppressed will and the kind of brutal justice that never quite shows up in the real world. Jagged rhythms rub against smooth harmonies, creating a pressure that builds deep beneath the surface. Then, right around the midpoint, the whole track fractures—structure collapses, guitars spiral out, and suddenly you’re knee-deep in some unhinged psych-jazz breakdown. It’s frantic, messy in the best way.

“Fossil” opens with a deceptive lightness — playful guitar work, a slow melodic unfurling, before launching into a firelit groove that dominates. Listening to Winterblind means staying off-balance. That tension, the unpredictability, becomes part of the record’s concept.

Midway through, “Distraction Waltz” delivers a real shock to the system. The arrangement brims with texture, theatrical vocal delivery, and high-flying background layers that tingle down your spine. There’s grandeur here, electricity that pulses through every cell. The chorus is rhythmically intricate but never alienating — it elevates the band as musicians fully unafraid to go big, to go bright, to stretch dynamics to the breaking point and let the groove do the damage.

“Cult Broker” moves upward in a slow, molten arc, building heat and pressure toward the chorus. The vocal line walks a fine wire — high notes and sharp guitars creating the feeling of endless descent.

And then there’s “Keep Posing,” the curtain call and the inferno. Every moment grows more charged, more metallic, until the track becomes a kind of glorious overload. The rhythm gains swagger, spark, and momentum, while the Fabian Villarroel-Benitez vocals bring in a theatrical metal-punk energy that closes the record like a floodlight in your face.

Winterblind has always danced along genre lines, and here their fusion of progressive rock intricacies with the blunt force trauma of metal feels effortlessly natural. It never comes across as forced, no awkward blending or ill-fitting pieces.

‘EGO,’ is heavy as hell, riffs for days, all that good stuff, but honestly, it’s the emotional punch that floored me. And you know what really sticks? Even after multiple spins, ‘EGO’ stays under your skin. The songs keep rattling around in your head, making you question stuff you didn’t even realize you were avoiding. The album hits heavy emotionally, settles into places that feel kinda uncomfortable—but weirdly good too. Honestly, this feels like their heaviest work so far. You can crank distortion, layer breakdowns, throw in more chaos, but nothing outweighs the kind of pressure this record delivers. This is the ceiling.

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