Album Review: Tine - A Winter Horrorscape

 Album Review 

Artist: Tine

A Winter Horrorscape

Release Date: September 5, 2025

Score 8/10 

Review by Rick Eaglestone

There's something deeply unsettling about winter that goes beyond the mere absence of warmth. It's the way shadows grow longer, how silence becomes oppressive, and how the familiar world transforms into something altogether more sinister. Count Murmur, the creative force behind Tine, understands this intimately, and with his third studio offering, "A Winter Horrorscape," he's crafted a sonic monument to the season's most malevolent aspects.

Since emerging from the Appalachian wilderness in 2015 with "The Forest Dreams of Black," Tine has consistently delivered symphonic black and death metal that feels both ancient and immediate. Following 2022's "Mergae Maris Profundi," expectations were understandably high for this latest chapter, 

The album opens with "Winter Comes," featuring the ethereal vocals of Samantha Bounkeua over a bed of haunting strings and choirs. It's a deceptively beautiful introduction that lulls you into a false sense of security before "A Feather from Lucifer's Wing" erupts with the fury of a blizzard-driven tempest. This track exemplifies everything Tine does best: the raw aggression of black metal tempered with symphonic elements that never feel overwrought or excessive. Count Murmur's vocals shift seamlessly between guttural death growls and the piercing shrieks that define the genre's most compelling practitioners with follow up track "A Path Through Frozen Woods" conjuring images of ancient forests where malevolent spirits dwell among the frost-laden branches, while the symphonic arrangements create a cinematic scope that would make film composers weep with envy.

"Return to the Black Forest in Winter" serves as the album's emotional centrepiece, a nearly seven-minute epic that showcases Count Murmur's evolution as a songwriter. The track builds from ambient beginnings through progressive passages that recall the more adventurous moments of Emperor's catalogue, before exploding into passages of pure symphonic black metal majesty.

The album's latter half maintains this high standard through "The Scathing Blizzard," a track that lives up to its title with relentless blast beats and tremolo-picked melodies that feel genuinely arctic in their bleakness. Count Murmur's ability to balance melody with aggression reaches its peak here, creating moments of genuine beauty amid the sonic storm. The symphonic arrangements during the song's climactic passages achieve the kind of emotional impact that separates great extreme metal from mere technical proficiency.

"Triumph at Nineveh" serves at the album crowning glory coming in a nearly 8 minutes is really allows the symphonics real time to permutate with ever evolving soundscapes blending in effortlessly 

The album concludes with its title track, "Winter Horrorscape," a sprawling composition that serves as both summary and culmination. Every element that makes Tine compelling appears here in refined form: the atmospheric keyboards, the precision drumming, the guitar work that balances technical proficiency with emotional resonance, and vocals that convey genuine menace without descending into cartoonish excess. It's a fitting end to an album that consistently delivers on its promise of seasonal horror.

"A Winter Horrorscape" represents essential listening for those new to Tine's work becuase this album serves as an ideal entry point into one of extreme metal's most consistently rewarding projects. As winter approaches, there's no better soundtrack for the season's darkest moments than this masterful exploration of cold, beauty, and horror intertwined.