Italian power metallers Wind Rose are back with their third album Stonehymn, and first with Inner Wound Recordings. The band blends a sensible mode of power metal, folk metal, with some modern riffing and it all forms into a chaos making the listener shout to the heavens with a sword in hand.

Guitarist Claudio Falconcini answered some questions surrounding Stonehymn and its relation to the famous novel The Hobbit, filming the “totally crazy” video for “To Erebor” and what separates them from their peers.

BraveWords: Stonehymn is the band’s third album – how would you say it differs from the first two albums?

Claudio: “Stonehymn is a more mature album in my opinion, as nothing is left to chance. This album is a bit similar to our previous one (2015’s) Wardens Of The West Wind (same production, similar songwriting), but this one has got a more folk-metal approach and a new inspiration for the music and the lyrics, which comes from the Native Americans and the Western movies soundtracks. We also paid more attention to the keyboards sounds, we searched and used more realistic instruments to give the album a more natural feeling.”

BraveWords: This is your first album with Inner Wound Recordings – explain what drew you towards the label for the new album?

Claudio: “I got in touch with Inner Wound’s chief more than 1 year before the album release; since the first conversations I felt like it was a privilege to have been offered a deal from such a clever and capable label. I was really impressed by the speed and the quality of their responses and by the plans they had in mind for us. Now that the album is out I am so glad of this choice and their work impresses me more each passing day!”

BraveWords: Stonehymn – explain the title of the album and the wintery landscape of the album cover.

Claudio: “Each song in the album is a stone hymn, because all the stories we are telling are set in landscapes where the rocks are dominating the scenery (the mountains in Middle-Earth and the canyons in Western America). So it’s like these stories are being told by the stones. We choose the wintery landscape to pay a homage to the Lonely Mountain in the Tolkien’s book The Hobbit.”

BraveWords: What tracks stick out to you from Stonehymn?

Claudio: “In my opinion the tracks that stand out the most are ‘Fallen Timbers’, for its wild strength and awesome historic reference, and ‘The Eyes Of The Mountain’ for its refinement of the composition; I like ‘Dance Of Fire’ too even if it might be a little difficult to digest. ‘To Erebor’ is also a stand-out track because of its catchiness.”

BraveWords: “Dance Of Fire” is one of my favorites. Reminds of early Ensiferum. Explain the writing of that track.

Claudio: “It’s one of my favourite on the album too, as I said before! I believe it was the hardest song to be written: we had a lot of elements that we just couldn’t stick together: we felt like when you are doing a puzzle but every piece you pick up doesn’t fit with the ones on the table; by the way we found a great way to arrange the song after many attempts, and now it’s one of my favorite tracks on the album as it never bores me. A curious thing is that the opening violin melody was totally different at the beginning, but an error on the recording software made it sound like this one you are hearing and we said ‘holy shit, this sounds much better now!’, and we re-recorded this new version.”

BraveWords: Why choose “To Erebor” for the music video? Was it any fun making that video?

Claudio: “We chose that song because of its catchiness and simplicity, so that it could enter in the listeners’ mind without an easy way-out! It also reflects all the main aspects of our music and it’s too damn fun to be played live. Yes, it was a funny day when we shot the video: imagine five fantasy dressed guys headbanging in a white room, totally crazy!”

BraveWords: What do you guys think separates Wind Rose from others in your genre?

Claudio: “What separates us from the other bands in the genre is that we don’t have screamed/growled vocals, and this could be a double edged weapon: it’s more friendly for those who like melodic heavy metal but it can sound ‘too happy’ for folk/pagan/death metal lovers. Another thing that distinguishes us from the other bands is the fact that we like to mesh up folkloristic melodies with downtuned modern riffs, and this can become a strength of the band in the future.”

BraveWords: You guys are power metal band with some folk elements – what made the band want to play this type of metal?

Claudio: “When we started writing our music we were all day long listening to Turisas, which is basically a power metal band with growls and folk things, so I think everything is explained yet! We also liked Blind Guardian a lot, and this helped us in falling in love with the fantasy settings combined with metal music. We are not big fans of classic power metal though; I think we play this kind of folk/power metal basically because it comes straight from our hearts!”

BraveWords: Where did the idea of wearing blue battle armor come from?

Claudio: “It came from the costume that the dwarf Kili wears in The Hobbit movie by Peter Jackson!”

BraveWords: Touring/show plans?

Claudio: “We’ll play Bloodstock Open Air and Masters of Rock this summer, then we are working on some shows for fall 2017 and early 2018: some of them is confirmed yet and we will announce them soon!”

(Photo by: Tommaso Barletta)