It's not often I get to say this, but I've never heard anything like these guys before in my entire life. In a musical world where just about every conceivable form of genre-blending has been attempted, Winters does something new. For those old enough to recall the old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ads, this is a case of "your bubblegum pop is stuck in my doom metal" and "no, your doom metal is in my bubblegum pop!"

Can you imagine the dreamy, perfectly modulated voices of a Britpop band like Herman's Hermits or the Kinks crooning catchy melodies over sludgy, morose doom metal resembling the heaviest of Pentagram and Cathedral? Or perhaps a bizarre cross between neo-70's heavy rockers Witchcraft and the droning "shoegazer" rock of My Bloody Valentine? That's what you get wtih the debut of England's uncanny Winters...plodding, turgid doom mixed with extreme melodic pop vocals relating tales of depression and alienation. WHAT THE FUCK???!

The strange combination works pretty well once you get used to it. The riffs are indeed thick and gooey, with a truly dank guitar tone. Some of the bass on "No Will" reminds me of Sunn 0))). And there's a lot of 70's inspired acid rock soloing,too. While the doomy riffs are catchy in their own way, the vocal melodies are catchy in a completely different way. Obscenely, the languidly droning pleasant vocals are just as unnerving as the typical grunt or wail. This mixture is found on virtually every track and while it gets rather monotonous by the end of the album, I can't say enough about a band who tries something different. Only on the final title cut do the band abandon doom metal for more of a straight shoegazer style drone ala Low. Not my cup of cloudy tea at all.

If any of what I've written above sounds intriguing, definitely check this out for a dose of something different. Now I can say I've heard it all...