REVIEW | WINTER IS COMING | SINGLE | Degeneracy | 2019
Did you enjoy the recent episode of season eight of Game of Thrones? I’m sure you did. I’m sure that right now you are needing something to tide you over until the next episode appears and you can hang on the edge of your seat to know just what it is that happens. Well, I’ve got a treat for you. Something to chew on if you will. I present the band Winter is Coming. They are a progressive metalcore band based out of Stone Mountain, Georgia and according to their description via The Circle Pit, WIC (Winter Is Coming), is for fans of Fit for A King, Bury Tomorrow, Periphery, Chelsea Grin, Killswitch Engage, While She Sleeps, and Born of Osiris. Quite the lineup, dare I say. All this being established, let’s look and review the single, Degeneracy, that was released via The Circle Pit. We will be analyzing a few things: song structure, lyricism, instrumentals, and vocals. Additionally, we will also look at the video, just for added analysis.
First off, we will start with the instrumental work. The instrumental work used in the single Degeneracy is something drenched in prog metalcore, as their genre entails. The riffs and such are very nice with a good flow and they make great use of making the song sound floaty with its added electronic sounds, not to leave out the very fun drum work. Will I say it sounds original? No. I only say this because, in a lot of these genres, that’s exhaustingly hard to be. Not to mention, it’s not intentional most times, it’s just, again, very hard to be original with instrumental work in this genre. This in no way means it’s bad, just something to work on. Now, onto the vocals and lyrics.
When I hear Winter is Coming, the first thing I think of is Game of Thrones, so I didn’t know whether to expect lyrics pertaining to that or something completely different. Well, I got the lyrics sent to me, as they aren’t listed, and I will say, if they are related, I’m assuming its related to something that is only in the mind of the writer. Nothing wrong with that just would have liked to see some sort of drop of lyricism that hinted a narrative revolving around Game of Thrones. The structure of the lyrics is very simplistic. There are rhyming schemes that aren’t too expressive and very basic to the track and very easy to follow, which is a pro and con. Makes it easy to follow along with the song, but so many bands follow this formula that it can get swept under the metalcore rug only to be confused with various other bands. This ties in with vocals, in regards specifically to vocal patterns. The patterns used, like the lyrics, didn’t really scream anything interesting to me, rather it seemed to just be very simplistic, which again, falls under my ordeal with being mixed into the crowd of similar sounding prog metalcore bands. Both harsh vocals and clean vocals fall under this. I will say that the cleans do sound good, as do the harsh vocals, however, regarding the harsh vocals, I feel that when recording this, the mic might have gotten eaten a bit whilst recording the lower growls and such. This technique is used often, but I think with this track it wasn’t tweaked quite enough as it sounds a bit muddy at times.
Furthermore, for the heck of it, we can look at the music video. Going into it, like the expectation set up with the lyrics, I expected something possibly related to Games of Thrones but was instead treated to something that was in no way seemingly related. The video can go to 1080p but honestly, this just doesn’t look too well done as far as looks go. The shots all look too HD, which I didn’t think would be something I could ever use to describe something, but it just feels like it doesn’t move too well as a music video. It just looks as if someone came in and said, “Hey, I’m going to film you guys with a GoPro, is that cool?”. It’s just something to be desired. I 100% appreciate the effort in trying to have a music video made, but maybe this just needed a bit more time put into it, as the lighting and angles all just seem very off-putting and unprofessional. Not to say it all music videos must be professional, as some purposes of videos are intentional to look odd, this was not one of those videos to me.
Wrapping this up, I will say, thank you to the band for reaching out. I do look forward to what they present to us via their upcoming EP, False King. I hope to see something newer brought to the table because I know it is possible and that this band has good potential. Just needs to have some more work put in here and there. That all being said and done, I will link their music video for Degeneracy down below, as well as their social media links and the like. Thank you for reading this and go check out Winter is Coming as well as The Circle Pit.
WINTER IS COMING – DEGENERACY (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
