Time II

Time II is the third Wintersun album and the first in seven years. The Finnish band began in 2003 as a solo project of Jari Mäenpää, then a member of Ensiferum; Nuclear Blast signed him at once and the self-titled debut followed in 2004, with Jari playing everything except the drums. Work on Time I started in 2006, stopped the year after, and the album finally appeared in 2012, reaching number two in Finland. Time II was to have followed, but The Forest Seasons came in 2017 instead and another seven years passed before this record was finished. Jari sings and plays guitar and keyboards; Kai Hahto of Nightwish drums, Jukka Koskinen, also of Nightwish, plays bass, and Teemu Mäntysaari, now a member of Megadeth, plays guitar. Three of the six tracks run past ten minutes, and acoustic guitar, blast beats and the Chinese erhu all appear across the 49 minutes. It came out on 30 August 2024, with Ward Records issuing the Japanese edition, GQCS-91502, the same day.