Keun-Sang Ryoo knew he was attempting something risky when he formed Korean symphonic metal band Gostwind.
"We were a little bit afraid when we made our first original song," Keun-Sang said, in an interview with Metal Observer.
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"Nobody had tried out something like our concept before. Since the release of our first album, many people said that our music is addictive, surprising and unique, and it encouraged us to continue."
Whoever these "many people" are, they're not wrong.
Gostwind's boldness in combining classical majesty, metal muscle, and traditional Korean instrumentation creates a musical identity that is worth investigating.
The group is constantly reinventing itself, and they stand alone in the field of Korean metal. Across the world, metal has been used as a vehicle for musicians to investigate and celebrate their cultural roots, particularly in the Scandinavian wilds. Gostwind contribute significantly to this tradition, adding in an Eastern element that is practically without precedent.
Keun-Sang, a former member of the more sludge-soaked Korean rock band Down in a Hole, formed Gostwind in 2005 with the goal of representing what he calls "Cho-Sun Rock." Their sound draws from two previously uncombined sources.
One is the locomotive drive of symphonic metal godheads such as Bind Guardian or Nightwish, who themselves infused the music of the British New Wave of Heavy Metal with lush, Wagnerian pomp. (It should be noted that Gostwind's take on this style is pointedly without the kitsch that's so frequently built into these often shameless melodramatics.)
The other source Gostwind employs is based on the traditional Korean folk instruments such as the daegeum and the haegeum. These instruments, in particular the fiddle-like haegeum, add a pleasantly shrill/harsh edge to Gostwind's already-heady thrash.
In 2013, Gostwind released their third full length, entitled Kkokdugaksi.
The title track finds the group refining their already extremely potent formula, funneling their diverse influences into a streamlined singularity. But to deconstruct what's happening on this jam, one can divide the group into two elite teams: the rhythm section and the soloists.
After a mournful, timpani-laden introduction, the unrelenting bulldozing of Gostwind's guitar-and-drums unit assumes a position of forward momentum and stays there, without much mercy to speak of.
When choruses turn around, the drums might take a moment for Bill Ward-style clobbering-time, but the guitars maintain a stoic aggression that keeps the song grounded. Meanwhile, the haegeum, daegeum, and vocalist Gim Ran alternately trade off solos, forming a sort of near-baroque polyphonic texture and lifting the overall sound to ultimate glory.
This style of music can lend itself to self-caricature, going over the top with such unabashed vigor that the result is embarrassing.
Gostwind betray no such interest in Tolkien-influenced nonsense: their investment in fusing symphonic works with metal appears to be intrinsically and exclusively musical. (To wit, one can find their punishing rendition of the "Dies Irae" movement from Mozart's Requiem, titled "Day of Wrath," on YouTube.)
With Kkokdugaksi, Gostwind retain a indomitable will to power that exudes a thoughtful musicianship without going all faeries-and-vikings on us.
Rather than hewing to the more tired tropes of this stylistically rigid sub-genre (in a genre, heavy metal, that loves its stylistically rigid sub-genres), Gostwind keep their work simultaneously pure and dynamic: in other words, deeply unique to themselves.
Check out the title track from Gostwind's latest album, Kkokgugaksi.
Jeff Tobias is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and writer currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Most recently, he has been researching the history of tuning systems and working on his jump shot.
Source : kpopstarz[dot]com
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