album review : Rise of the Phoenix (2012) – Before the Dawn

album : Rise of the Phoenix

artist : Before the Dawn

genre : Melodic Death/Gothic Metal

year : 2012

When you drink a solid beer, that tastes exactly like how you had imagined it would be, once, you don’t stop drinking it. That’s how it is. Something along the same lines happened when I first heard Before the Dawn‘s last release Deathstar Rising. I wasn’t fooling around when I said I’d hear their discography and it was Deathstar Rising that forced me to do so. Finnish metal bands sharing their melancholy with the planet is old story now, but how do you present in a way just so it doesn’t sound like it has been done to death? You soak yourselves from head to toe with the negativity and write your music and your lyrics in the same disturbed state. I learnt this rule from Before the Dawn who chose melodic death metal for their outlet without sounding like infinite other bands playing the same genre. Rise of the Phoenix is, without doubt, a slab of bleak melody and features several original compositions where we see the band adding new bits and pieces here and there.

Album number seven for the band, Rise of the Phoenix is a package of twelve tracks which will provide you a respite from all things happening in melo-death at the moment. Heralding a message of trustworthy metal, Before the Dawn barge into your ears through their fresh efforts. You’ll find yourself catapulted into another space, amongst the stars, shining brighter with the songs from Rise of the Phoenix in tow. Adventurous as it may sound, the album is a ride filled with extreme emotions and there are flakes of every genre falling over you.

Confined acoustic strums takes us into the album with Exordium. The first smack comes the moment we get into Pitch-Black Universe. All their other albums start playing in your head because it is the same trademark Before the Dawn sound. Like forever, somewhere along the way our head is teased by the meandering melody. There are brutally honest and abrupt parts on songs like Phoenix Rising, Eclipse and Closure where the pace acts as a topping. Melody that bails you out can be found Cross to Bear, Throne of Ice and Fallen World.

The echo of each song will be left behind, as shrines of desolate thoughts crumble down. This power driven by Tuomas Saukkonen‘s recognizable vocals align everything in line with your mood. Acoustic instruments, piano and slow instrumental sections up the appeal of the record. Rising of the Phoenix is very much closer to many of the earlier works by Before the Dawn, and I would say this album separates out itself from the oft heard melodic death drama and arrives at an acceptable conclusion. The album loses points for having a few ordinary tracks, which probably happened since the band did not take much time in recording this album after having released one only last year.

Before the Dawn is an important band to have come out of the Finnish metal scene, and their tragedy makes for pleasant hearing, not once or twice but each time the band enters the studio. Rad!

Rating : 3.5/5

album review : Emerald Forest and the Blackbird (2012) – Swallow the Sun

album : Emerald Forest and the Blackbird

artist : Swallow the Sun

genre : Melodic Doom/Death Metal

year : 2012

February received a gloomy welcome by one of the pioneers of melodic doom metal genre. Swallow the Sun, much like their name, have almost sucked the life out of their listeners, and continue doing so. Unlike their fellow doom players, this Finnish band presents a mixture of discontinuous death metal empowered by their ever growing relation with hopeless misery. Emerald Forest and the Blackbird is a tricky release, as the band has decided to throw in quite a lot of passages that take time to fuck your happiness. As someone who has adored this band, my intimacy with the band’s songwriting has gone down a few levels, and I can say that since I gladly posed for a photograph with a smiling face while the track Hate, Lead the Way played. I should have gotten up, snatched the cam and thrown it out into the snow because Swallow the Sun was trying to fill the room with hate! Screw that, after repeated plays I realized this track has clambered it’s way towards being one of the strongest track on Emerald Forest and the Blackbird.

For some odd reason I see a strong Katatonia influence on track number two This Cut Is The Deepest, but those of you who haven’t been through Katatonia‘s ultra-bleak music would find this song to be an immediate remedy to your problem as your own scar would seem unimportant in front of it. As the album progresses, keyboard player Aleksi Munter becomes the hunter, as he takes it upon himself to shoot down the shitty keyboardists in the metal scene by providing a memorable background score for Swallow the Sun‘s fifth full-length. Another track worth mentioning is Labyrinth Of London (Horror pt. IV) because whatever it is the name means the delight of hearing the double bass, screechy vocals and the agreeable pauses can only be expressed by replaying the track. Other honorable mentions are Of Death And Corruption and Night Will Forgive Us, they carry a quality which should have been picked up by the remaining part of the album.

Gauging by the songs on Emerald Forest and the Blackbird, I believe the tunes on a few of the tracks have been heard before. And the other let down is the songs fail to inject into your veins and vigorously spread the grief. Once the album is done, life is back to normal. I ended up abusing the next thing I saw on the television, the way I used to before I heard the album. The band’s preferred bait of gathering all the pessimism in one place ends up sounding incomplete. Their attempt to cast a shroud of emotional darkness isn’t totally successful on Emerald Forest and the Blackbird. Anyways it won’t make a lot of difference if you gather their entire discography in a single playlist and play the tracks in shuffle mode. This way the weak songs on Emerald Forest and the Blackbird would go unnoticed and all that would remain are the shining sections that never fail to depress.

Rating : 3/5

album review : Kosmonument (2011) – Oranssi Pazuzu

album : Kosmonument

artist : Oranssi Pazuzu

genre : Psychedelic Black Metal

year : 2011

While it might put a lot of you to sleep, true black metal enthusiasts should drop everything you are doing and check out this psychedelic black metal act Oranssi Pazuzu. Songs by this Finnish band are like the wings of a trippy looking bird which are being flapped just to get you high. Kosmonument is not the first album I’ve heard in this genre but some of the rest have sounded so terrible that it seemed like some handicapped brains have worked together.

The band says they make music that invites all the arsonists and smokers to hold hands – Now this is something that they should not have said because it is uncool and very poserish. Oranssi Pazuzu‘s second album Kosmonument clocks at over an hour. It’s a must listen for those recovering from a bad trip. Don’t switch off the lights completely while hearing the album, have a dim setup if you can, that’s when Kosmonument will work as sweet poison.

Rating : 3/5

album review : One For Sorrow (2011) – Insomnium

album : One For Sorrow

artist : Insomnium

genre : Melodic Death Metal

year : 2011

Yes, they did make you feel like you’ve lost everything in life. They did make you sense their pain even at times when you were happy, all because you decided to play their songs. They did make darkness look more dark than you’d expect it to be. Somebody had to make you go through all of this and in the melodic death genre it was Insomnium. And, they had set out to do just that which implies success kissed their feet with a whole lot of mourning.

But this Finnish band, with a stronghold in the department that matches the unpleasant description I provided, has come to a point where it seems they have robbed you of all the cheerfulness they could. Now, on their fifth full-length One For Sorrow they are taking their skills of playing the instruments to a better level without providing much variety in their sound.

One For Sorrow takes off in a very promising manner with Inertia, where in desolation is touched upon. They’ve kept the album opener simplistically strong. Once you hit track number two Through The Shadows old-Insomnium memories begin to creep in. And this record shouldn’t have sounded like that. Not always. The pattern continues and the only thing one can do now is try to find a song that is better than the other because they all are from the same old-Insomnium tree. A tree which has had stronger branches in the past.

So, going by the above logic Song of The Blackest Bird, Unsung, Regain the Fire and One For Sorrow are more melodic, more death and more metal than the rest. In fact Unsung and the title track manage to transfer you to some place Insomnium has in mind. I just can’t stop playing Decoherence, as it is something else altogether. It is a song that stands on it’s own feet. Decoherence is melodic metal, with no death in it.

Insomnium has always been spraying melancholy all over us, and even though I hate to say this about one of the bands that I love listening to every once in a while, this time over with One For Sorrow they sound a bit stagnated. No doubt all songs on the record are good but they haven’t experimented or composed anything that we did not expect them to. But I will always have a thing for this band for being one of the very few acts that have rightly understood my favorite emotion.

Rating : 3/5

album review : Varjot (2011) – Goatmoon

album : Varjot

artist : Goatmoon

genre : Black Metal

year : 2011

Riding entirely along the melodic wave, Goatmoon have released something so impressive that I had to break my silence of words. Having been on a hiatus for more than two weeks now, something told me it would be a black metal release that’d force me to pick up my pen once again.

For starters Goatmoon hail from Finland and have been belting out black metal since the winter of 2002. Much against those who hate the thought of hatred itself, this band has kept it alive and a little more than that. Two full-lengths, several splits and demos later they have decided to take over your thoughts and make it swing their way which happens to be a route of satanism and chilling breezes.

Goatmoon is a one-man band and all the songs are hatched by BlackGoat Gravedesecrator. Probably his name would be one of the very few things not working for the band. Well, that’s none of my business anyways. Varjot, as the album is named, seeks to flood you with loads of black metal with sheets of folk placed very carefully amongst the tracks. There is not much difficulty in finding rawness on the album as Gravedesecrator knows what is the ‘in thing’. Cold riffs with enough reasons to foster melody makes Varjot a must have.

blackgoat gravedesecrator

An otherwise uninteresting 2011 has been perked up by these powerful metal releases and life doesn’t seem to run out of reasons. Although the album could have showcased a lot more variety and taken hatred to an all new level,  Goatmoon have rejuvenated black metal in their own way and my speakers cannot stop blaring the tracks from Varjot.

Rating : 3.5/5

album review : The Beginning of Times (2011) – Amorphis

album : The Beginning of Times

artist : Amorphis

genre : Modern Rock/Melodic Metal

year : 2011

Continuing from where they left off on Skyforger, Finnish musicians Amorphis have cracked the code once again. More like a second part of their earlier epic effort, The Beginning of Times has the band applying the melodic whipped cream to the remaining parts of their bodies. For someone who has been tripping on Skyforger like forever now, the sun doesn’t seem that bright after playing The Beginning of Times.

Owning your ears with the opener Battle for Light, the entire force of Amorphis is seen coming alive on the record. The transition from being a progressive death/doom band to a modern melodic metal/rock outfit has strengthened the whole idea of changing what a band plays. Along with Battle for Light where the band accumulates the death growls, we have a Mermaid that is again on the same lines but is more full of instruments.

The clean vocals by Tomi Joutsen throughout the record amplifies the sad bits. There are tracks on the album that faintly even touch power metal. More closer would be Soothsayer, On a Stranded Shore and Escape. Third track My Enemy is more aggressively built, shifting between clean vocals and growls. Many songs on The Beginning of Times are made with the central focus on keyboard. Sample a few of them like You I Need, Song of the Sage and Reformation.

Everything that will ever please you on this album is the stunning play of fingers on the keyboard. This instrument has given so much to the sound of this band that taking it away would be more shocking than even the disbanding of Amorphis. The keyboard solos makes this one of the few bands that give direct competition to solos belted out on a guitar.

This new album would not come across as a surprise. You might like it a little less than Skyforger because when their previous album came out there was nothing that sounded like that. Now we have a reference and hence The Beginning of Times will be second in line, only after Skyforger. But for first timers this new offering from Amorphis will make you froth, and you will not require any more melody in the near future.

Rating : 3.5/5

review : Skyforger (2009) by Amorphis

album review : Skyforger (2009) – Amorphis

album : Skyforger

artist : Amorphis

genre : Modern Rock/Melodic Metal

year : 2009

I committed a sin by not writing about the most gorgeous album to have released in 2009 – Skyforger by Finnish metallers Amorphis. The songs here will pierce your heart due to the high emotional quotient of the album. All credit goes to the advancement they have made in understanding melody. I never doubted the band’s capability to produce something like this, just that I’m amazed at how well the songs have been spun together.

Without being told to do so, you’ll say a few worthy words in favor of the album art yourself. It will not take you more than a second to close your eyes when the first note hits. Far away from this world, you’ll reach somewhere in the middle of nowhere. You do not want to be disturbed, not even by your own self. The synthesizers and vocals are the aspects that will begin their game with your mind. Track after track the melodic wheel spins around you. Nothing can spoil the web that has been crafted.

Slowly, you’ll fall in love with everything about the album.

My pod was running out of battery when I had reached Highest Star on the album. I could not wait to charge the player and get on with the remaining. Talking about my pod, how will I ever remove this album from my music player? I’m allergic to such good music, and there is no reason I should. I cannot give you a better picture of how addictive this record is. To the dudes at Amorphis, accept my honest article and my rating for what you guys have given me through Skyforger.

Rating : 4.5/5