Melting their diverse elements together, Celestial Wizard dropped their face-melting record Winds of the Cosmos on the 20th of January 2023. With Celestial Wizard’s ripping riffs and storming sound, Winds of the Cosmos is a record that fits all heavy music fans. Let me tell you more about it.
Celestial Wizard cements their sound by opening Winds of the Cosmos with Andromeda. This brief intro starts with spacey effects before exploding into a melodic riffing hurricane that’ll send you off your seat headbanging. Revenant picks up from where its predecessor ended and starts its own heavy flow. It shows Celestial Wizard‘s diverse influences as they smoothly shift between different sounds and approaches, offering an entertaining, interesting structure that combines heavy fast riffs, melodic guitars, pounding fast drumming, and compelling grooves all together with powerful clean vocals and harsh ones in an energy-boosting mix. Ice Realm hits next with an inviting melodic riff and a highly dynamic pace that pushes forward toward a heavier and bigger sound. It’s a pretty catchy tune with an irresistible flow, insane shredding solos, incredible dual guitar harmonics, and diverse tight vocal deliveries, I believe this one will drive power metal and heavy metal fans crazy creating some singalong moments when played live. With an epic sound and blasting dynamics, Powerthrone is next. This is my favorite song off the record so far, as it has everything a metal fan needs from intense roller-coaster riffs to melodic multi-layered ones as well as pounding fast drumming, expressive vocal deliveries, and driving groove, all in a well-written changing structure with complex yet entertaining arrangements.
Eternal Scourage and Steel Crysalis both come next, keeping the energy and dynamics sky high, with an obvious progression in the whole record’s writing and dynamics. They have a haunting big sound and hard-hitting progression with unpredictable twists, banger melodic riffs, and wailing badass solos. Undead Renegade maximizes the record’s intensity with machine gun drumming and a melodic feast of riffs with Celestial Wizard’s signature atmospheric orchestrations. Their energy and relentless banging riffs reminded me of a lot of melodic metal heavyweights, as Undead Renegade has a sound and structure that goes only forward with surprising progressions and interesting dynamic ups and downs. Cyberhawk is where Celestial Wizard fully unleashed their crazy soloing skills and tight songwriting with its unpredictable structure and screaming solos flying everywhere. It has a brutally heavy pace with a multi-layered arrangement and a full-speed performance by the whole band, using every element at their disposal to keep you headbanging. Ending the record on a high note comes the title track Winds of the Cosmos, mixing all the elements and paths Celestial Wizard has taken throughout the whole record. Opening with a folk-ish melodic riff, these guys take us on a thrilling journey filled with energy boosters, big theatrical parts, and blasting breakdowns, mixing it all without compromising their heaviness or intensity. The acoustic interlude was a cool surprise and it created the perfect build-up to the amazing solos that followed and returned to epically end the record.
Winds of the Cosmos shows Celestial Wizard’s solid writing skills and deep roots in heavy and extreme metal. These guys managed to create a headbanging journey with complex writing and amazing musicianship with no rests or breaks, a journey that every metalhead is looking for. Looking forward to more from Celestial Wizard, keep on rocking. Cheers!
