Wintersun

Jari Maenpaa began writing the music for Wintersun at the end of 1995, the year before he joined the folk metal band Ensiferum as singer and guitarist. In 1997, serving in the Finnish military, he contracted tuberculosis; the diagnosis came late, he needed surgery to remove part of a lung and spent months in hospital. The song "Beautiful Death" came out of that. In 2003 he hired Kai Hahto as a session drummer, sent new demos to Nuclear Blast and was offered a deal. He began arranging the songs after returning from the Ensiferum sessions for Iron, but the studio time he had booked for Wintersun clashed with the tour promoting Iron, and asking the band for time off led to him leaving Ensiferum — despite having meant to keep Wintersun as a side project. The recording was spread across several rooms: Hahto's drums at Tico Tico Studios in January 2004, the vocals and most of the guitars and synthesisers at Sundi Coop Studios in April, and additional synths and guitar solos at Maenpaa's home on his sixteen-track. He described it this way: "Lyrically it's quite a personal record, but there's a little bit of fantasy also. [...] underneath all the metaphors to stars, space, vast and cold winter landscapes, it's all about my personal life: my feelings, emotions, thoughts, dreams, visions and hallucinations." The Japanese edition adds the three demo tracks that won him the contract. The running order here is the original's as printed.