Music Street Journal - Music News & Reviews

Winters Black Clouds in Twin Galaxies Review by Gary Hill This disc is at times brilliant. At times it’s also just plain boring. The combination of sounds here, doomy metal, mixed with psychedelia and grunge is unique and intriguing. It doesn’t have enough meat on its bones to continue without variation through the length of a full CD, though. For that reason after a while it all starts to sound the same. It’s a real shame, too because the closing piece is probably the best one on show here – it just can’t really be appreciated without listening to it by itself because by the time you get to it your senses are numbed by the monolithic nature of this disc. This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2009 Volume 6 at lulu.com/strangesound.

Track by Track Review

Fried The bass brings this in and controls a lot of the first part of the tune. First the voice enters, bringing some psychedelia to the table. When the guitar joins we're definitely in a stoner metal vein. There is some freaky fast paced jamming near the end. This is a strange, but potent stomper. It's a cool way to start things off, too.

Aftershown The riff driven segment that drives this is very much in keeping with early Black Sabbath, but the vocals seem more like a psychedelic version of Nirvana.

Oh No There are some hints of Sabbath-like metal on this, but really it’s more of a grunge meets psychedelia and punk approach here. It’s a change of pace and reminds me a bit of some early The Who, but I’m not overly blown away by this one.

Endless Flight The ghost of Kurt Cobain is all over this track. It really feels like it would have not been much of a stretch for the cut to have come from Nirvana. Still, there is a bit of The Who styled psychedelia and a little Sabbath-oriented doom.

Life Was So Simple A little mellower and almost cheery in comparison, this is a cool tune and a little change from some of the other stuff here. It works out into material closer to the Sabbath doom sound meeting The Who’s psychedelic.

Mark My Word Take healthy dosages of Sabbath-like doom and blend liberally with several spoonfuls of early Who. Put it all into a jam band like glass and serve.

Two Wrongs Make a Right There’s still quite a bit of that psychedelia in this track, but there’s also a huge chunk of Sabbath doom. In some ways this reminds me a little of Sleep meets Nirvana. There are hints of punk rock, too.

I’m A Destroyer The general sounds we’ve heard throughout the disc are present on this one, too. It’s not bad, but the sound is starting to get pretty monolithic by this point.

No Will This one begins very slow and plodding, but eventually moves out to another dosage of the same medicine we’ve been getting for a while now. It’s beginning to be a little tedious.

Did Me In More doom meets grunge, it’s just plain boring by this point.

Black Clouds in Twin Galaxies This is actually better. The addition of some keyboards and other textures comes really close to saving it. It’s just that the sameness here has worn down the ability to withstand much more of it and it doesn’t work well enough to fully recover. That’s a shame, too because taken by itself the track is probably the best one on the set.

Return to the Winters Artist Page

Artists Directory

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
© 2025 Music Street Journal Site design and programming by Studio Fyra, Inc./Beetcafe.com