There's only so much time in the day to listen to music. At least, that's my excuse for why I still have music I need (or simply want) to catch up with. Enslaved's catalog comes to mind. The bits I've heard have been awesome, and I expect to enjoy getting to know their discography when the time comes.


What am I waiting for? And why do I keep ending sentences with prepositions? To answer the former, it is more than a time matter. I like the idea of always having more things to explore, especially things I think I will like. That's why, for example, there's still books by Glen Cook that I've never read.


Over the past year I've started crossing Andreas Hedlund's works off my list. He's the man who used to go by the stage name “Vintersorg,” and now usually calls himself “Mr. V.” He's a Swedish singer, musician, and songwriter who I learned back in 2000 or 2001, when I first re-immersed myself in the Metal scene. I would buy the latest issues of Unrestrained! And Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles magazine (remember magazines?), and there would always be an advertisement for the recent Napalm Records releases. Hedlund's solo project was known as Vintersorg, and his CosmicGenesis album was often in the ads.


If I remember right, my friend Odinn already had the 1999 Vintersorg release, Ödemarkensson (Son of the Wilderness), and I borrowed it from him to listen to on a road trip. I was still learning to appreciate harsh vocals, but I enjoyed many of the songs. Odinn also had a CD of one of Hedlund's other projects, the folk band Otyg, and I think I borrowed that too. Otyg's lead guitarist was Hedlund's old friend Mattias Marklund, and for Cosmic Genesis, Marklund joined Vintersorg, making the project a duo (though Hedlund still wrote the songs, with Marklund helping with the arrangements and recording).


At some point, probably in 2001, I bought Cosmic Genesis. The next year I bought the newly-released Visions From the Spiral Generator, and in 2004, The Focusing Blur. From Cosmic Genesis onward, the albums got less folky. The root Black Metal became tempered more and more with Progressive flourishes, and the lyrics became mostly English. The earlier Vintersorg releases, which include the Hedniskhjärtad (Pagan Hearted) EP and Tillfjälls (To the Mountains) album were sung entirely in Swedish.


Hedlund became friendly with Borknagar mainman Oystein Brun during the late 1990s. When singer ICS Vortex amicably left Borknagar, Brun asked Hedlund to take over the vocal duties. Hedlund joined the band in 2001, and recorded the Empiricism album. He's remained with them ever since (and Vortex has recently returned, expanding the vocal variety), and I bought the 2004 album Epic when it came out. I liked it, but I could see how Vintersorg and Borknagar were becoming too similar. I stopped paying attention to Borknagar for a while.


Brun and Hedlund understood the situation. The next Borknagar album, 2006's Origin, was all acoustic, which stripped away the prog edge of Epic. Musically, Borknagar had become, and still is, the shared vision of Brun and Lars “Lazare” Nedlund. Lazare loves quirky progressive touches in his music, while Brun wanted to create songs with a cold tone distinct from the warmth of Borknagar (“warm” by Black and extreme metal standards). Hedlund was interested in this too, so together they formed the side-project Cronian, releasing the Terra album also in 2006.

The second Cronian album, Enterprise, came out in 2008. Before that, Hedlund released two albums in 2007. Vintersorg's Solensrötter wasn't as folky as the advertising campaign made it out to be, but it did remove some of the proggier elements, and it restored the Swedish language. The other album was a new solo project, which he named Waterclime. This wasn't Metal at all, it was instead an outlet for Hedlund's love of 70s prog rock in the vein of Uriah Heep and ELP. The first Waterclime album, The Astral Factor, actually came out in 2006, with the second, Imaginative, coming out the next year. These gave Hedlund the creative space to express his interest in proggy music to the full, while reserving the Vintersorg project for folk-influenced Black Metal.


Borknagar returned in 2010, with the plugged-in Universal album. This was followed in 2012 by Urd. I heard some of the latter, and that is where I began my catching up with Hedlund's releases. I bought Urd, and liked it a lot. I listened to some Waterclime songs, and then bought both albums. Cronian released their third album, Erathems, during 2013, and I liked the samples enough to purchase that one too. I followed this up by buying Universal.


I still needed to catch up with Vintersorg. A new album, Naturbal (Nature's Bonfire) was due in early summer 2014. Two albums had come out since Solens rötter, Jordpuls (Earth Pulse) in 2011 and Orkan (Hurricane) in 2012. This past spring therefore, I bought both, and then Naturbal, when it came out. Together, these are ¾ of a cycle about the classic elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, with only the latter remaining to be released. With some time to digest all this music, I like almost all of it, from all the varied projects. Honestly, a lot of the music has similarities, and Hedlund's vocals are a constant, but it feels as though the song elements these days are all in the right places. Borknagar is blackened, but with some warmth and quirkiness, Cronian is blackened with a bit of chill and some cinematic quality, Waterclime is proggy and almost happy at times (probably due to the lack of harsh vocals), while Vintersorg mixes folk moments with its black Metal core. About the latter, the lead guitar parts from Jordpuls on have been especially good, both in composition and in the actual playing. This is just a guess, but I suspect that Marklund has had a bigger share of the arranging of the songs for these albums than he did in the past.


I hope Hedlund will be releasing more music in the future. Sadly, he hit his head in an accident in his home during November. He wrote a single statement on November 29, asking for privacy and admitting he had a long recovery ahead. Nothing has been stated about his condition since then, but no news is hopefully good news. I know he had written the music for a new Otyg reunion album, and for a third Waterclime one. He was supposed to start recording vocals for the next Borknagar album in late 2014, but that is now on hold until he's recovered. I wish him all the best.


In the meantime, I haven't completed catching up on his music. I'm working my way back through the Borknagar and Cronian catalogs. The next albums I'll acquire will probably be Origin and Enterprise, but I'll get them all eventually. Enslaved will be added too. One last detail about how to acquire these albums. I provided Amazon links for most of them. Hedlund was selling all of the Vintersorg albums as digital downloads via Bandcamp, but his site is no longer available following his accident. That was the only way I knew to legally acquire Hedniskhjärtad, which is out of print on CD and not available elsewhere as an MP3. Erathems is still available on Bandcamp, but the other two Cronian releases have disappeared from the site.


On a different note, I hope to receive the proof of the typesetting for Sunwheels and Siegrunen in the next few weeks. I hope everyone reading this has had a great start to 2015, all the best to all of you.