Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa --- Moonsorrow --- 2011 (Spinefarm)
People who are better versed in the Finnish language advise me this is about death and the underworld, and you know, I'm going to have to take their word for it, cause I couldn't even say "Help! Someone is trying to kill me!" in Finnish without a native looking at me with astonishment and wondering why I was so interested in what they had in their sandwich. In short, my Finnish is slightly worse than my Turkish, which is to say, I can't speak or understand a word of either language.
My friends over at
Encyclopaedia Metallum tell me that the band's name came from a song by Celtic Frost, and that they began as a black metal band, adding folk elements and swinging in a more pagan/folk direction as time went on. This is their sixth and latest album, which is supposed to see them moving more back towards a black metal sound. It certainly has interesting instruments on it though, not the sort of thing you'd expect from a black metal band, with the likes of bouzouki, mouth harp, recorder, saw (?) and accordion to name but a few. Sounds like it could be a hoot. Or not.
There are only seven tracks in all, but two are twelve minutes long and two are sixteen, so it's not like you're being shortchanged. The album opens on one of those twelve-minuters, "Tähdetön", with a hard and heavy guitar pulling us right into it as the drums pound out a doomy rhythm, slow but powerful. Unfortunately for me, it's another screamer and this time I can honestly say I have no idea what he's singing as it's not in English. But with a voice like this it probably wouldn't matter. Dark choral vocals join the melody as the guitars chug and cut away; there's not much evidence of those esoteric instruments I mentioned yet. Good powerful, dramatic music though, if you can ignore the singer. Which I find hard to do.
What sounds like a fast keyboard run joins in and the song takes on a sort of folky feel, then "Hävitetty" is a short instrumental with very celtic indeed sounds and the sound of someone walking, perhaps over gravel, coughing a lot while the wind whistles in the background. Following this we're into another twelve-minute track, and this seems to be the pattern throughout the album: long song, short instrumental, long song, short instrumental. Big rousing choral vocal and punchy guitar and violin I think as "Muinaiset" opens and marches along with a kind of middle ages sort of melody. It's good as far as it goes, but I'm not sure it needs twelve minutes to make its point.
Another instrumental interlude then as "Nälkä, väsymys ja epätoivo" basically carries on the sound effects we heard in "Hävitetty", with a man walking and breathing heavily, this time the sound of dogs or wolves baying is added and a deep dark ominous synthesiser line slides in and takes us into "Huuto", one of the two sixteen minute tracks, which starts off on nice acoustic guitar but soon ramps up on the back of electric and trundles along like a steam train. Some good keyboard work here and the guitarists certainly distinguish themselves. Again though: sixteen minutes? There is a great sense of drama and energy in the song, veering at times almost into progressive metal territory. The keyboard riff running through the latter parts of it really characterises the track. One more instrumental then and we're onto the final track.
In "Kuolleille", our walking man seems to have left the dogs or wolves behind, but now it seems he's running and out of breath. The wind is still howling. He sounds as if he may be climbing. Then he lets out a blood-curdling yell, and I guess that's the end of him. "Kuolleiden maa" closes the album on another epic sixteen minute track, with churning guitar and solid keyboard and we have two blessed minutes of peace before Mister Screamy comes in with his vocal. Sigh. Oh wait, what's this? In idly clicking the "lyrics" tab on EM I see some kind soul has provided English translations! Well thanks whoever you are, but I'll be goddamned if I'm going to go talking about them now that the review is almost over. Maybe some other time.
It's a damn fine conclusion to the album anyway, and were it not for the vocalist I think I could end up becoming a fan of this band. As it is, death vocals, grunts, growls, screams, call them what you will, have again managed to destroy my chance to enjoy some really good music. Damn them.
TRACKLISTING
1. Tähdetön
2. Hävitetty
3. Muinaiset
4. Nälkä, väsymys ja epätoivo
5. Huuto
6. Kuolleille
7. Kuolleiden maa
Always interesting to review something that's not in English, and I often have found that some of my favourite bands (Sigur Ros, Tyr, Olafur Arnulds) have been languishing in the "foreign language" section of my brain, where I have seen the albums but passed over them because they were not in English. Now, with a somewhat broader outlook on music, I've managed to discover quite a few non-English bands and have enjoyed most if not all of them. Despite the annoying vocal here, the final impression I'm left with is of some very powerful and moving music, and a style that is in the end rather hard to categorise, and refuses to be neatly packed away into one subgenre or another.
Read more here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonsorrow