Just in time for the summer festival season in Europe, Wind Rose are back with all the bravado, metal bombast, and epic tales that we’ve come to expect over the last few years. “Dwarven metal” with its rousing choruses, epic feel, and folk metal touches is here to stay and Warfront is sure to further broaden their audience and satisfy their existing base.

Sometimes a band comes along that instantly grabs your attention and Wind Rose was one of those bands for me when I first received Stonehymn to review in 2017. Glancing at the album artwork and some of the song titles and seeing the band was from Italy, I was fully expecting something akin to European power metal, which is one of my favorite genres. I was genuinely surprised by their “Dwarven metal” with its epic choruses, singalong sections, simple, recognizable melodies, and sense of fun. While the band has been around for now since 2009, the Italian natives, have really come into their own with the release of Stonehymn in 2017 and the brilliant move of releasing a video for their cover of the Minecraft-inspired song “Diggy Diggy Hole”, which last I checked had over 30 million plays on YouTube…crazy large numbers for any act, let alone for some Italians signing metal songs of fantasy and looking like Vikings. To show that the success of “Diggy Diggy Hole” was no fluke, their second video off Wintersaga for “Drunken Dwarves is well over 5 million plays as of this review. The band itself has certainly worked its way up to this point, releasing eps and albums since 2010 and touring Europe with the likes of Wintersun, Epica, Ensiferum, and Eluveitie and has become a regular on the large festival scene.

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