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Heavy Metal

Walden Green

created: Jan. 11, 2025, 5 a.m. | updated: Aug. 18, 2025, 3:59 a.m.

Inspiration can arrive as an iridescent butterfly or a rushing torrent, or, as in the music of Cameron Winter, it can look and sound a lot like torture. “Songs are a hundred ugly babies/I can’t feed,” the frontman of Brooklyn’s Geese laments near the midpoint of his debut solo album, Heavy Metal. Bolstered by timeless arrangements that are by turns folksy, soulful, and neo-classical, Winter establishes himself as a songwriter par excellence. One of the first things to notice about Heavy Metal, and perhaps its defining feature, is Winter’s voice. Over the even-keeled strut of “Nausicäa (Love Will Be Revealed),” Winter alternately croons and yelps the name of the titular Greek princess, infusing each syllable with want.

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