Winter Tales - Figments Of The Imagination

Winter Tales - Figments of the Imagination demo 1997
1) Somewhere In The Mountains Dark
2) Desecration So Beautiful
3) A Winter's Tale
4) In The August Break Of Dusk
5) Figments Of The Imagination
6) As Night Slowly Pass
7) Across The Emerald Sea

Reuploaded

Winter Tales was a Norwegian two man operation who, as far as I know, released only this one demo of very atmospheric, heavily keyboard-dependent "black" or dark or forest or whatever metal. Don't let the vague description freak you out, it is actually good stuff but not black metal even if it heavily borrows elements from it and especially the Norse school. Out of the seven tracks here, four are either fully or mostly instrumental and this works better than you might first think. The remaining three more metal tracks are all quite lenghty so the total clocks a little under 40 minutes.

The tape had a good sound (even if Metalion described it muddled in Slayer mag, what the hell? Many albums sound more muddled!), but as my copy was a dub there are minor tape glitches and the usual associated little imperfections. Nothing significant though, this can be safely recommended even if you're intimitated by the typical demo sound. The only gripe I have here really is the spoken parts on some tracks; they make me cringe on almost any and all releases (especially underground ones) and this is no exception. That's probably part of the reason I like the instrumental bits here. I didn't get a copy of the covers back then so we're stuck with the Metal Archives image.