siLLy puPPy AMORPHIS is one of those bands that has certainly earned its place in metal history as one of Finland’s most successful bands that has consistently cranked out albums for the last 30 years beginning with its death doom debut “The Karelian Isthmus.” Probably most famous for its popularizing of folk death metal with its lauded “Tales From The Thousand Lakes,” AMORPHIS was not one to rest on those laurels alone and boldly reinvented itself with the following “Elegy” where the band established itself as a major force in the world of progressive metal with death metal ties. After a series of less fruitful experiments the band once again latched onto a stylistic approach in 2006 with “Eclipse” which provided the blueprint that seemed to work so well and therefore AMORPHIS has been pretty much crafting variations on this style ever since.

Existing somewhere between the world of progressive rock, melo-death and folk metal, AMORPHIS returns in 2022 with HALO its 15th overall studio album and the third installation of the trilogy that includes “Under The Cloud” and the previous album par excellence “Queen of Time.” With a stable lineup since 2006’s “Eclipse,” AMORPHIS has morphed into a true power house of melo-metal and continues to release epic sounding albums that although may be a bit too commercial in nature for many diehard metalheads, nevertheless delivers in a consistency unparalleled in the vast metal universe. While HALO fails in reinventing the band’s long established stylistic approach, it certainly delivers the goods for true fans who long for that clever mix of melo-death guttural growls mixed with clean vocal melodies, catchy pop infused hooks and a clash between abrasive brutality and slick production values. Oh and the production value with nice backing vocal sections is slickly satisfying.

In some ways, HALO harkens back to the “Tales From The Thousand Lakes” era with more deathened guttural growls that add a bit of contrast to the otherwise oft syrupy melodic approaches that the band has pretty much always dished out in great abundance. While a direct successor of “Queen of Time,” this time around the emphasis seems to be to craft a more abrupt contrast between the instantly accessibly melodic constructs with the extreme nature of death metal. Calculated? Yeah, a bit but AMORPHIS has a propensity of bringing it all together in a way only these Finns can. With 11 tracks that near the 56 minute mark, AMORPHIS may not reinvent the wheel but offer yet another interesting variation in their well establish theme. This time around in addition to the plethora of guitars, bass, drums and keyboards, some of which have mined the psychedelic world of 1970s progressive rock, there are also moments of sitar sounds and other unexpected treats.

AMORPHIS has never been a top dog in my metal world. Just a little too comfy in that playing it safe zone for my tastes but i cannot deny that this band is exceptional when it comes to walking that middle ground between extremely nauseatingly commercial and exhilaratingly edgy. The formula has propelled these Finns to the top of the metal universe’s superstar status and that is no small feat indeed. I’m certainly not adverse to commercial sounds even in the styles of extreme metal that are best left to the unabashed extremists who spit in the face of accessibility but i have to admit that i do find the smoothed out sounds of AMORPHIS to be intriguing as this band really knows the art of balance in how it walks these tightrope acts. Given the similarities between any AMORPHIS album since “Eclipse,” it has become more difficult to distinguish albums but for some reason i don’t enjoy this one as much as i did with “Queen of Time.”

It wouldn’t surprise me if AMORPHIS is around another decade or two repeating this formula with similar praise and contempt heaped upon it for its resolute dedication to its stylist approach that it’s loathe to alienate however in the year 2022 it is starting to sound a bit dated and perhaps the band should consider a slight upgrade in its comfort zone. All in all HALO is yet another consistent release that will neither offend or surprise but continues the AMORPHIS proggy melo-death sound in all its predictability. Although this is not a favorite band by any means, AMORPHIS certainly garners a lot of respect in its business model for sure. Biggest complaint of this album is the formula runs dry after about 2/3 of the album and then yawn.

lukretion Four year after their latest full-length release, Finnish prog-metal heavyweights Amorphis drop their new record Halo on February 11th via brand-new label Atomic Fire Records. It’s a mighty solid album, with a big, dynamic sound that oscillates between moments of brutal heaviness, catchy melodic hooks, bombastic orchestral arrangements and folk-tinged progressiveness. Packing at least four/five big songs destined to become epic additions to the band's huge catalogue, Halo has everything we have come to expect from the Finns and consolidates Amorphis’ status as one of the most unique and relevant voices in metal.

The album was written and recorded by the same line-up who brought us Queen of Time in 2018, and it loosely follows similar musical coordinates. The core of the music is folk-tinged melodic death metal, which Amorphis enrichen with an impressive kaleidoscope of influences. There are traces of 1970’s prog-rock and psychedelia - an influence the Finns have held dear since their early days -, with big swathes of Hammond organ, trippy delay-effected guitars, and awesome synths solos surfacing at multiple places throughout the album. Meanwhile, the subtle use of loops and electronic effects adds a touch of modernity to the music. Meanwhile, the orchestral and choir arrangements of Francesco Ferrini (Fleshgod Apocalypse) add a distinctive symphonic flavour to the proceedings, with a bombast that at times calls to mind Hollywood soundtrack music (“The Moon”).

In interviews, producer Jens Bogren and band members have described Halo as both heavier and poppier relative to Amorphis’ previous albums. In a weird way, they are both right. The album’s heavy parts are massive, with fast and meaty guitar riffs that cut through Tomi Joutsen’s cavernous growls, while Jan Rechberger’s plummeting drums raise hell in the background. But Halo is also a tremendously melodic record, with plenty of soaring guitar leads and solos as well as a huge amount of catchy vocal melodies. Tomi Joutsen’s clean vocals are more expressive and brighter than ever, which strongly contributes to the album’s uplifting and vibrant feel. In fact, this is perhaps the aspect of Halo that I found most striking after listening to it a few times: the whole record buzzes with an energy that is almost primal and is simply irresistible. Yet, at the same time the album is pervaded by a thick air of melancholia and gravity, resulting in a formidable contrast that is well-captured in the LP’s chiaroscuro artwork, courtesy of French artist Jean-Emmanuel ‘Valnoir’ Simoulin.

The album sounds great, organic and well-balanced, with a production that is clean and modern without feeling plasticky and toothless. There are plenty of highlights across the record’s 55 minutes. The first half is irresistible, with the trio of tracks “On The Dark Waters”, “The Moon” and “Windmane” constituting the creative peak of the LP. The riffs are engrossing and the melodies are splendid, striking the right balance between catchiness and artistry and managing to be memorable without being obvious. There’s also a couple of detours from the usual verse/chorus structure in these tracks, with space for solos and instrumental breaks, like the sitar-sounding guitar solo that surfaces on “On The Dark Waters”, or the amazing synth solo on “Windmane”. This track is probably my favourite of the whole album, with the huge contrast between its speed-of-light verse (pay attention to the spectacular drumming!) and the more relaxed and dreamy chorus.

Unfortunately, in the middle of the album things perhaps start to drag a little, as the use of the same songwriting formula, tightly set around the repetition of hard/fast verse and melodic/slow chorus, starts to feel a tad monotonous. The songs between “A New Land” and “War” tend to blur into one another, and even repeated listens do not help a great deal to memorize the differences between them. The main issue here, I think, is that these four tracks do not quite possess the magic spark that instead ignites the trio of songs on the first half of the record. The melodies are slightly less fresh, the riffs a tad less inspired. And as soon as the quality of the material drops a little, monotony inevitably sets in when the songs are structurally so similar to one another.

It is only with the title-track “Halo” – a much poppier and lighter piece that breaks the formula of the previous songs - that things pick up again. The album closes even more strongly with the riff deluge of “The Wolf” and the beautiful acoustic rendition of “My Name Is Night”, a sombre track that feels distinctively diverse from the rest of the album, giving me strong Katatonia vibes, as Swedish singer Petronella Nettermalm (Paatos) splendidly duets with Tomi Joutsen. A fantastic way to close the album.

Although I am left longing for a little more variety in the material that could help sustain attention throughout the album’s duration, Halo is nevertheless a strong record that will for sure please fans of the band. The LP shows without a doubt that Amorphis are still alive and well, and have not lost an ounce of the energy and freshness of their early days. Album after album, the Finns keep impressing with their ability to compose slight variations on a theme that time and again delivers massive songs of the highest possible quality. This is no less true on Halo, with tracks like “On The Dark Waters”, “The Moon”, “Windmane”, “Halo”, “The Wolf” and “My Name is Night” that are all stardom material, making the album a simply mandatory listening for any metal fan.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

Vim Fuego Is that a sitar? On a death metal album?

It’s an electric sitar, yes, but this isn’t really a death metal album. It’s a close relative to one though.

Before “Elegy”, Amorphis was a bit of a death metal icon. The band’s first album “The Karelian Isthmus” released in 1992 was much revered for it’s brutality and heaviness, with guitarist Tomi Koivusaari’s guttural vocals carving the band a unique spot in the death metal pantheon. And to follow that up you go even more brutal, right? Of course you fucking don’t. That’s how you paint yourself into a corner. No, you do what Amorphis did and innovate.

So, along came 1994’s “Tales From The Thousand Lakes”, and metal fans were in awe of Amorphis again. The album was still brutal and deathly, but this time it had clean vocals, courtesy of singer Pasi Koskinen. Sure, this wasn’t completely unknown, as Fear Factory had been doing it for a few years, but Amorphis did it differently, with a dose of melody, but without compromising on the metal content.

And so to 1996 and “Elegy” and the sitar. There’s also tambourines, accordions, keyboards and acoustic guitars, and it’s obvious Amorphis isn’t a death metal band any more. And that’s OK. In fact, it’s more than OK. No, the growls aren’t gone completely – they provide a stark contrast on most tracks, but Koivusaari enunciates far more clearly than most death metal vocals. The guitars are no longer distorted chainsaws, but they are far from completely clean. Amorphis was never a blast-after-blast style death metal band, more the mid-pace groove style. Their groove never really relied on chug-a-chug riffs much either, so the evolution to fluid melodic, veering on psychedelic riffs isn’t too jarring for most Amorphis fans. In fact, it all seems completely logical.

This sounds like a full-on mainstream sell-out, with a band seemingly turning it’s back on their dark, primitive roots. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As an album, “Elegy” is heavy as hell, and totally uncompromising. It’s just that it’s not traditional death metal-style heavy, and there’s no overt attempt to aim for a commercial market. This is a band well and truly expanding their horizons. Look at a track like “The Orphan”. It’s basically ambient metal, with vocals and swirling keyboards fleshing it out, and then without the listener realising it, there’s a chunky great riff playing under an ethereal choir. There’s even twin lead guitar melodies. This is the layered, textured songwriting style throughout the album.

Lyrically, the band have taken great inspiration from Finnish mythology. “Elegy” is based on the Kanteletar, a collection of almost 700 poems and ballads, and a companion work to the Kalevala, which “Tales of the Thousand Lakes” was based on. These folk tales of everyday life and philosophy seemed to have also inspired the band to folk music melodies, but still only a stone’s throw from full on metal song construction. There are so many damn good catchy riffs and melodies it’s hard to pick any in particular as the best example. There’s the mid-section of “Song of the Troubled One”, but then compare it to the introduction to “Against Widows”, or the outro to “On Rich and Poor”, and it’s impossible to say “yes, this one is the best” simply because these passages of music just keep coming.

“Elegy’ is often called a transitional album, between Amorphis’ death metal roots and their progressive metal destination, and often such transitional albums get overlooked because the albums either side are purer examples of the different genres. No band ever sets out to record an album thinking it’s going to be transitional though, and are simply making the music they feel inspired to create at that time. “Elegy” is not a transition, but an evolution, a triumph, and a masterpiece.

Kev Rowland After twelve albums, world tours, countless gold records, Amorphis are back with their mix of metal, folklore and rock. After their last tour they decided to take a break before going into the studio to rehearse the new album, so had a single day off, before starting the next chapter. This means that all the tightness and understanding that develops from being on the road and gigging were still very much there. In many ways it goes back to the early Seventies when bands were expect to either be on the road or in the studio, preferably releasing an album every 6-8 months. I remember reading an interview with Ian Anderson saying that all his downtime while on tour in the States was spent writing songs for the next Jethro Tull album as they had to be ready for the band to record before they headed back out on the next tour.

I have long been a fan of Amorphis, who somehow manage to bring together many different styles and influences yet make the music so complete and seamless that it always makes total sense. It doesn’t matter if there is a saxophone, or guitar solo, or choir, it is always exactly the right thing to move the music onwards. After their last album, ‘Under The Red Cloud’, some fans may have expected them to get even heavier, but here they have moved sideways and have brought in the likes Chrigel Glanzmann (Eluveitie) on pipes, laryngeal singer Albert Kuvezin and saxophonist Jørgen Munkeby, plus an orchestra and a choir, while also maintaining an incredibly heavy intensity. These elements deliver a dramatic and cinematic depth to the sound, making everything even more epic, even deeper, and even more meaningful than ever before.

As always, borne by Pekka Kainulainen's poetic lyrics, AMORPHIS penetrate deeper than ever into the thicket of folklore and cosmic contexts. "This time, Pekka tells about the cosmic powers that people believed in long ago in a very universal way: the rise and fall of cultures." This is also symbolized by the image of the bee on the album cover - the queen of time, as Holopainen explains the title of the album. "It represents the microcosm that can nevertheless trigger cataclysmic changes. The fall of world empires ushered in by a small sprouting seed. The butterfly that causes a hurricane." And as “Daughter Of Hate” needed a spoken part, lyricist Kainulainen also appears for the first time as a narrator. An excellent choice: His wise and venerable shaman-like voice is a perfect match to the music. Original bassist Olli-Pekka Laine, has also returned to the fold, following the departure of Niclas Etelävuori after 17 years, as the band look both back over what has gone before, and to the future with yet another stunning piece of work. From the production through to the quality and style of the songs, this is essential.

voila_la_scorie Once again, I have Banger TV on YouTube and its Lock Horns program to thank for pointing me to yet another band that I felt interesting enough to merit purchasing an album. On the episode about early death / doom metal, Amorphis' name came up, and as I had already heard about their "Land of a Thousand Lakes" album from checking out compilation and "best" videos on YouTube, I began sampling albums in an effort to decide which to buy first. My choice was "Land of a Thousand Lakes", but thriftiness prevailed and I bought the cheaper debut album, "The Keralian Isthmus".

This is also yet another case of me learning something through a heavy metal band as I was unfamiliar with the Keralian Isthmus and its history. The album, however, is not about that; I had to check Wikipedia.

The re-issue of the debut I have also includes five songs from the "Privilege of Evil" EP that the band recorded around the time the original project called Abhorrence was dissolving into Amorphis. Thus, even though three songs appear on both albums, they have a different sound from "The Keralian Isthmus" with one of the most noticeable being that the EP version of "Vulgar Necrolaty" has a different vocalist and a death metal-styled guitar solo.

The album's begins with a short acoustic guitar track and from there on its heavy electric guitars all the way. The music typically follows a mid-tempo speed but does have both faster and slower moments. Each song generally changes rhythm and tempo a few times, making any individual track interesting to listen to. You can expect chugging heavy guitars, barre chords, and riffs comprised of melodic, single-note-picked riffs. Sometimes I am reminded of Iron Maiden's melodic guitar riffs though the actual melodies played by Amorphis are different in style, and I'm sure there's a bit of Celtic Frost in "The Sign from the North Side". The vocals are the deep, guttural style, and the double bass drums are used more to enhance the feeling of speed in the faster moments. With song titles like "Black Embrace" and "The Lost Name of God" you might wonder about any black metal influence in the roots of the band. The production of the main album is good enough for an early nineties, metal debut, the EP tracks sounded a little rougher.

The album is a good listen overall, though I found that even after three or four times through I wasn't checking out any song titles. That's because the songs, which pack various riffs, styles, and tempo changes in each song, end up becoming not so obviously distinguishable from one another. They each play like a mini version of the album. When you hear the guitar melody at the end of "The Pilgrimage" followed by the guitar melody in "Misery Path", you could be easily misled into thinking it was the same song sped up a little.

For that reason, "The Karelian Isthmus" is a good enough album to listen to but doesn't have any truly outstanding tracks. I could recommend "Vulgar Necrolatry" as the song to listen to but really nearly any track is a good introduction to the album.

I have listened to some of the band's later material and they have really evolved their sound drastically. Comparing "Sky Forger" to this album, you'd think they were two entirely different bands!

A good album for slower, more complex death metal with elements of doom and also melodic riffs. Three solid stars!