Amorphis – Tales From The Thousand Lakes: Live At Tavastia (Reigning Phoenix Music) [Paul Hutchings]
Recorded with what appears to be no audience, and with no reference to this release on the band’s social media, one has questions that are not clearly covered in the press release that I received. Hence the assumption here that is one of those horrible lockdown events, it’s amazing that Finns Amorphis were able to summon the enthusiasm to make this a reasonable recording. A live show with no crowd isn’t a live show in my opinion. (Check out Queen Of Time Live at Tavastia or Live At Helsinki Hall for other live recordings)
Regardless, this package does provide an opportunity to see Amorphis perform their seminal album in full, celebrating over 30 years since its original release. And to their credit, on the Blu-ray version I watched, Amorphis give it everything. And if nothing else, it’s a timely reminder to reacquaint oneself with this seminal album, whilst watching the band’s intensity and drive as they perform.
Recorded in the iconic Tavastia club in Helsinki, Finland, Tales From The Thousand Lakes is a concept album based on the Finnish national epic Kalevala, a piece of 19th century poetry compiled by Elias Lonnrot from Karelian and Finnish folklore and mythology. Often regarded as one of the influential releases in the genre, this was the first Amorphis album to feature the keyboards of Kasper Mårtenson, who left the band three years later.
Of all the many metal bands from the Northern countries, Amorphis are one of the most influential, and they have maintained their originality and creativity from debut The Karelian Isthmus in 1992 through to the most recent opus, 2022’s Halo.
And what this release does do is bring this album roaring back into focus. From the blistering Into Hiding that opens the album, to the Deep Purple-esque keys that drench The Castaway, this is a reworking that ticks all the boxes. The sound is crystal clear, you can hear each instrument as they combine in glorious majesty.
Having had a stable line up for nearly 20 years, one can now fully appreciate the cohesion and fluidity that the band present. Vocalist Tomi Joutsen, the last member to join the band in 2005 possesses a vocal range that straddles the harsher growls and soaring cleans with ease, whilst the lead guitar of founding member Esa Holopainen cuts through with clinical precision.
In an album filled with classic cuts, there are some choice selections that demand even more attention. The majesty of Black Winter Day, with its wall of riffs that provide Santeri Kallio’s keys and the dual guitars of Holopainen and rhythm guitarist Tomi Koivusaari has always been a highlight, and it remains a favourite here.
There are many other gems on this album, but I’ll finish with specific reference to the sheer bombast of Magic And Mayhem which is just glorious, and which sounds incredible, 30 years after it was first unleashed on the metal world, and the brutal death metal drive of Vulgar Necrolatry, which lead to the mazy conclusion that is My Kantele, one that shows the band’s native roots.
This recording has certainly brought this album back to the attention and reminded me just how good are Amorphis. A special version perhaps, and probably one for the hardcore fan to shell out for. It’s one for the collectors. Me, I’ll probably just enjoy it and wait with anticipation for the band’s next album to drop. 8/10
Meltem – Mare Nostrum (Discos Macarras/Nafra Records/Nooirax Producciones/Quebranta Records) [Paul Scoble]
Meltem are a Catalan three piece playing a style of super heavy psychedelic doom metal. The Barcelona based band is made up of David Giménez on bass guitar, Pep Caravantes on drums and vocals and Daniel Pozuelo on guitar. The band released their first demo in 2022, Mare Nostrum is the bands first album.
The style on offer on Mare Nostrum is a mix of very heavy doom metal and folk from the Mediterranean area, to my ears it sounds like there are elements from Turkey, Greece and North Africa. The folk is mainly percussion with stringed instruments providing subtle backing and tuneful lead passages. The album is split into four songs, two very long and two that are slightly shorter.
The album opens with Tretze, the first very long song. Tretze starts with crushingly heavy riffs with a relentless feel to them. The music is super heavy and is joined by clean clear vocals with a very powerful feel. The song then takes a turn towards a softer sound with the guitars becoming clean and after a few bars chanting is added. The chanting is religious in style with a sacerdotal feel. The song then starts to build in heaviness and aggressive vocals join the mix, until the song is back to the super heavy and relentless sound we first encountered at the beginning of the song. In the last couple of minutes Tretze speeds up racing to a very heavy ending.
Next comes Curcuna one of the shorter songs. The first half of Curcuna is Mediterranean Folk, with lots of percussion and a hypnotic string melody. After this the drumming goes back to a doom metal style and clean guitars are added. The song then builds to heavy doom at which point we are dropped into much faster riffing with a great tempo that has lots of energy and aggressiveness, before a huge slow and heavy ending.
Mandragora is the second of the very long tracks. The song is made up of three different sounds; riffs that feel tumultuous and dissonant, taut mid-paced doom that is heavy and purposeful and section with big drumming and clean guitar. The song segues through the three sections several times at one point adding an echoey Tremolo Picked riff to the taut mid-paced doom and near the end adding the religious chanting to the final clean Guitar section and ending on a melody lead.
The album comes to an end with the song Oasi, the shortest track on the album. Oasi is a taut Folk instrumental with drumming, strings and bells, it’s a very striking way to end the album. Mare Nostrum is a great album. The doom is super heavy and very enjoyable, in places some of the heaviest doom I have heard. The folk elements were very enjoyable and worked well with the doom, it adds an extra colour to the sound and always had my head nodding. I also enjoyed the chanting which had a genuine Religious quality to it, and added some melody and atmosphere.
Regardless, this package does provide an opportunity to see Amorphis perform their seminal album in full, celebrating over 30 years since its original release. And to their credit, on the Blu-ray version I watched, Amorphis give it everything. And if nothing else, it’s a timely reminder to reacquaint oneself with this seminal album, whilst watching the band’s intensity and drive as they perform.
Recorded in the iconic Tavastia club in Helsinki, Finland, Tales From The Thousand Lakes is a concept album based on the Finnish national epic Kalevala, a piece of 19th century poetry compiled by Elias Lonnrot from Karelian and Finnish folklore and mythology. Often regarded as one of the influential releases in the genre, this was the first Amorphis album to feature the keyboards of Kasper Mårtenson, who left the band three years later.
Of all the many metal bands from the Northern countries, Amorphis are one of the most influential, and they have maintained their originality and creativity from debut The Karelian Isthmus in 1992 through to the most recent opus, 2022’s Halo.
And what this release does do is bring this album roaring back into focus. From the blistering Into Hiding that opens the album, to the Deep Purple-esque keys that drench The Castaway, this is a reworking that ticks all the boxes. The sound is crystal clear, you can hear each instrument as they combine in glorious majesty.
Having had a stable line up for nearly 20 years, one can now fully appreciate the cohesion and fluidity that the band present. Vocalist Tomi Joutsen, the last member to join the band in 2005 possesses a vocal range that straddles the harsher growls and soaring cleans with ease, whilst the lead guitar of founding member Esa Holopainen cuts through with clinical precision.
In an album filled with classic cuts, there are some choice selections that demand even more attention. The majesty of Black Winter Day, with its wall of riffs that provide Santeri Kallio’s keys and the dual guitars of Holopainen and rhythm guitarist Tomi Koivusaari has always been a highlight, and it remains a favourite here.
There are many other gems on this album, but I’ll finish with specific reference to the sheer bombast of Magic And Mayhem which is just glorious, and which sounds incredible, 30 years after it was first unleashed on the metal world, and the brutal death metal drive of Vulgar Necrolatry, which lead to the mazy conclusion that is My Kantele, one that shows the band’s native roots.
This recording has certainly brought this album back to the attention and reminded me just how good are Amorphis. A special version perhaps, and probably one for the hardcore fan to shell out for. It’s one for the collectors. Me, I’ll probably just enjoy it and wait with anticipation for the band’s next album to drop. 8/10
Meltem – Mare Nostrum (Discos Macarras/Nafra Records/Nooirax Producciones/Quebranta Records) [Paul Scoble]
Meltem are a Catalan three piece playing a style of super heavy psychedelic doom metal. The Barcelona based band is made up of David Giménez on bass guitar, Pep Caravantes on drums and vocals and Daniel Pozuelo on guitar. The band released their first demo in 2022, Mare Nostrum is the bands first album.
The style on offer on Mare Nostrum is a mix of very heavy doom metal and folk from the Mediterranean area, to my ears it sounds like there are elements from Turkey, Greece and North Africa. The folk is mainly percussion with stringed instruments providing subtle backing and tuneful lead passages. The album is split into four songs, two very long and two that are slightly shorter.
The album opens with Tretze, the first very long song. Tretze starts with crushingly heavy riffs with a relentless feel to them. The music is super heavy and is joined by clean clear vocals with a very powerful feel. The song then takes a turn towards a softer sound with the guitars becoming clean and after a few bars chanting is added. The chanting is religious in style with a sacerdotal feel. The song then starts to build in heaviness and aggressive vocals join the mix, until the song is back to the super heavy and relentless sound we first encountered at the beginning of the song. In the last couple of minutes Tretze speeds up racing to a very heavy ending.
Next comes Curcuna one of the shorter songs. The first half of Curcuna is Mediterranean Folk, with lots of percussion and a hypnotic string melody. After this the drumming goes back to a doom metal style and clean guitars are added. The song then builds to heavy doom at which point we are dropped into much faster riffing with a great tempo that has lots of energy and aggressiveness, before a huge slow and heavy ending.
Mandragora is the second of the very long tracks. The song is made up of three different sounds; riffs that feel tumultuous and dissonant, taut mid-paced doom that is heavy and purposeful and section with big drumming and clean guitar. The song segues through the three sections several times at one point adding an echoey Tremolo Picked riff to the taut mid-paced doom and near the end adding the religious chanting to the final clean Guitar section and ending on a melody lead.
The album comes to an end with the song Oasi, the shortest track on the album. Oasi is a taut Folk instrumental with drumming, strings and bells, it’s a very striking way to end the album. Mare Nostrum is a great album. The doom is super heavy and very enjoyable, in places some of the heaviest doom I have heard. The folk elements were very enjoyable and worked well with the doom, it adds an extra colour to the sound and always had my head nodding. I also enjoyed the chanting which had a genuine Religious quality to it, and added some melody and atmosphere.
There were a couple of places that thought could do with a little more complexity, however as this is a debut album I don’t think that is a huge problem, complexity can wait for album number two. This is a great debut and Meltem should be very proud of it. 8/10
Lord Buffalo - Holus Bolus (Blues Funeral Recordings) [Rich Piva]
I’m pretty sure I am going to get killed for this one, but I am really struggling with the new album from Auston, Texas band Lord Buffalo. I have a feeling I am going to be alone on this, but I found their third album, Holus Bolus, to drag around the multiple instrumental tracks that to me really don’t go anywhere. Now, I am always up for a difficult listen, but for whatever reason I can just not latch on to these seven new tracks.
Now there is some stuff I really enjoy on Holus Bolus. The title track for example. This has some serious Murder By Death vibes and I am always here for that. I love the dust bowl vibes of this track and the atmosphere surrounding the song is top notch. The use of the violin adds to the mystique of the record. The flip side of that is the next track, Slow Drug. I can understand building atmosphere, but this is six minutes that could have been a shorter interlude, as it acts as more of a distraction than anything else, especially as the second track on the record. I also would have wanted it to go into something that it was building up to, but instead it ends and we get Passing Joy, which is a great song, but not exactly what I was expecting Slow Drug to build to.
Lord Buffalo - Holus Bolus (Blues Funeral Recordings) [Rich Piva]
I’m pretty sure I am going to get killed for this one, but I am really struggling with the new album from Auston, Texas band Lord Buffalo. I have a feeling I am going to be alone on this, but I found their third album, Holus Bolus, to drag around the multiple instrumental tracks that to me really don’t go anywhere. Now, I am always up for a difficult listen, but for whatever reason I can just not latch on to these seven new tracks.
Now there is some stuff I really enjoy on Holus Bolus. The title track for example. This has some serious Murder By Death vibes and I am always here for that. I love the dust bowl vibes of this track and the atmosphere surrounding the song is top notch. The use of the violin adds to the mystique of the record. The flip side of that is the next track, Slow Drug. I can understand building atmosphere, but this is six minutes that could have been a shorter interlude, as it acts as more of a distraction than anything else, especially as the second track on the record. I also would have wanted it to go into something that it was building up to, but instead it ends and we get Passing Joy, which is a great song, but not exactly what I was expecting Slow Drug to build to.
The western creepy vibes are strong on this one too, kind of like Nick Cave partnering with the aforementioned Murder By Death, and I love it. The trend of every other track I dig continues as Malpaisano, an acoustic and voice track fails to capture me, but I Wait OnThe Door Slab does, driven by the violin and a catchiness you don’t always hear from Lord Buffalo, this song actually reminds me of the band Cursive, specifically during The Ugly Organ era of the band, which is an extremely high complement from me. So dark and so good. The trend breaks with Cracks In The Vermeer, as this one is a haunting slow burn that has a lot of the same vibes I mentioned earlier. My issue is more with the closer, Rowing In Eden, which is seven plus minutes that would fit better in a Cave/Ellis soundtrack than it does as the closer to this record.
Maybe I was not the right guy to review this record, but I will say the stuff that I like on Holus Bolus I really like, but there is just too much filler for me that tends to drag on. I love the vibe Lord Buffalo brings, I am just missing the full vision of this album (ducking from tomatoes thrown at me). 6/10
Maybe I was not the right guy to review this record, but I will say the stuff that I like on Holus Bolus I really like, but there is just too much filler for me that tends to drag on. I love the vibe Lord Buffalo brings, I am just missing the full vision of this album (ducking from tomatoes thrown at me). 6/10
Disloyal - Divine Miasmata (Black Lion Records) [Mark Young]
The 5th Album from Polish death metal veterans, Disloyal frustrates and amazes in equal measure. As we go through the review, I hope you get the sense that although it didn’t totally land with me, that is not to say you won’t find it to be a stunning exercise in Death metal.
It starts with an intro track, Divine Miasmata which is a scene setter of a visitation from a demon most black. I know I complain about these normally, but in this case, I’ll make an exception as it tees up Silent Revolution to come in with those discordant guitars and razor-sharp drumming that is full-on in the mix. It is an odd start, the furious trem picking and melody lines that run into a drum pattern that is like a clock that keeps the oddest time. Instead of going for a full-on assault, Silent Revolution feels like it is two ideas thrown together, each fighting for supremacy with neither coming out on top. The vocals are suitably grim and have a tightly focused sound.
The 5th Album from Polish death metal veterans, Disloyal frustrates and amazes in equal measure. As we go through the review, I hope you get the sense that although it didn’t totally land with me, that is not to say you won’t find it to be a stunning exercise in Death metal.
It starts with an intro track, Divine Miasmata which is a scene setter of a visitation from a demon most black. I know I complain about these normally, but in this case, I’ll make an exception as it tees up Silent Revolution to come in with those discordant guitars and razor-sharp drumming that is full-on in the mix. It is an odd start, the furious trem picking and melody lines that run into a drum pattern that is like a clock that keeps the oddest time. Instead of going for a full-on assault, Silent Revolution feels like it is two ideas thrown together, each fighting for supremacy with neither coming out on top. The vocals are suitably grim and have a tightly focused sound.
Even the lead break sounds strange, off-kilter, and not what I expected at all. It evokes a feeling of time being stretched and compressed at the same moment and I’ll be honest it is jarring. The Black Pope on the other hand comes flying in, super rapid double bass with a riff line that is more like it. And it is a stormer, hitting all the right notes even when they drop those discord parts again. This time, it fits and conjures up an expansive cloak of sound. However, even though it hits like a closed fist it loses some of the impact because it runs too long.
1347-1352 shows that there is more to them than just pure battery. Mixing in a fantastic melodic passage amongst the heaviness, it is supplanted for what I can only describe as a head-scratcher of an arrangement, of the music within being stretched once more until they break out into superspeed. This mixing of technical/off-time motifs upsets the flow, and I cannot get a handle on it, do I like this or not? What is now apparent is that the comment of songs running just that smidge too long looks like it is going to repeat. The actual musicianship on display is faultless, the lurching forward and pulling back on a whim is impressive but it kills the flow.
1347-1352 shows that there is more to them than just pure battery. Mixing in a fantastic melodic passage amongst the heaviness, it is supplanted for what I can only describe as a head-scratcher of an arrangement, of the music within being stretched once more until they break out into superspeed. This mixing of technical/off-time motifs upsets the flow, and I cannot get a handle on it, do I like this or not? What is now apparent is that the comment of songs running just that smidge too long looks like it is going to repeat. The actual musicianship on display is faultless, the lurching forward and pulling back on a whim is impressive but it kills the flow.
Stella Peccatorum has a crushing, technical opening that launches into some magic riffing, that gallop/triplet attack that is just royal It is a pity that as soon as it gets going, they drop back to opening arrangement again. It is too soon and once again it slows the momentum down. And it is starting to annoy. There is some phenomenal guitar work on this song, in fact the whole package is quality. Once it flies it represents some of the finest death metal that Poland (or anywhere) has to offer but they seem hell-bent on sabotaging it.
Betrayed Faith comes in, and again the opening is spot-on and leads into that top-drawer musicianship once more. Double bass, tidy fills, and lightning-fast flurries are on the menu here. On here they get it completely right, the slow-down with voice-over is dense, layered and then they pull out of it with guitar lines weaving in and out until they hit escape velocity again. This is just next-level stuff, and you wonder why they couldn’t have done this before. Religion Of Warfare comes in, picking up where Betrayed left off, keeping that approach in play which pays off to a high standard as it navigates a crazed path, taking in atypical lead breaks amongst the pummelling rhythm work.
Ravens Of Starvation keeps the wizardry going, notes hit in flurries with rampant whammy abuse and it feels more cohesive now, there is less going on which makes it so effective and the arrangement is focused properly, it knows what it wants to be and like Betrayed Faith and Religion Of Warfare it delivers sonic battering of the highest order. The Ascension Of Abaddon is our final track, with an opening of glass-like chords that are firmly stepped on for an exercise in rapid-fire rhythm. A mid-paced melodic break ushers in those chords from hell once more, a slow clenched fist of a death metal breakdown before they blast off once more. Despite this late burst, it still suffers from the overlong lengths that were an issue earlier on, which is frustrating because had they been a little ruthless, we could have been having a different discussion today.
Frustrating is probably a good description, in that there seems to be a lack of direction in what they wanted to go in. The songs suffer as a result and add into it that they run too long meaning that at least for me they lose a lot of the visceral impact required. The later songs show a more concentrated approach and work better because of that but it means that you wonder how those earlier songs would have been had they been focused like the latter. 6/10
Ravens Of Starvation keeps the wizardry going, notes hit in flurries with rampant whammy abuse and it feels more cohesive now, there is less going on which makes it so effective and the arrangement is focused properly, it knows what it wants to be and like Betrayed Faith and Religion Of Warfare it delivers sonic battering of the highest order. The Ascension Of Abaddon is our final track, with an opening of glass-like chords that are firmly stepped on for an exercise in rapid-fire rhythm. A mid-paced melodic break ushers in those chords from hell once more, a slow clenched fist of a death metal breakdown before they blast off once more. Despite this late burst, it still suffers from the overlong lengths that were an issue earlier on, which is frustrating because had they been a little ruthless, we could have been having a different discussion today.
Frustrating is probably a good description, in that there seems to be a lack of direction in what they wanted to go in. The songs suffer as a result and add into it that they run too long meaning that at least for me they lose a lot of the visceral impact required. The later songs show a more concentrated approach and work better because of that but it means that you wonder how those earlier songs would have been had they been focused like the latter. 6/10
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