|
 Various Artists - From Kaamos to Midnight Sun
This sampler shows us what Finland has to offer, or actually, had to offer in 1998. As an introducement to good Finnish metalbands it is now outdated, but it's still a nice sampler with some good bands. The first band is also the most known one: Immortal Souls. The first song, Snow Soul, is pretty good, in the vein of Under the Northern Sky. The second song, I Am Me, isn't. I really don't like the vocals and further it clearly is demo-quality. Thankfully totally different from their other work. The second band is Manifestium. Though I don't know this band, the songs do sound familiar, I guess I heard them once on the internet. They make average Melodic Death metal. The synths are nice, the songs overall sound ok, the vocals are average. A nice addition to the sampler, but I'm not sure I'd buy a CD or something like that from them. After that comes Deuteronomium, a fairly known band. Their first song, Abortion, is an ok Death metal song, not horrible, not too special. Their second song, Spell of Hell, however, is awesome. Great building up with keys, followed by great up-tempo Death metal. Definitaly one of the best songs on this sampler. The fourth band is Mordecai, a band often seen as legendary. They sadly only deliver one song here. Their song, Dawn Eternal, is for sure a nice song. Very atmospheric Melodic Death metal, I like it. However, I don't think it's so good, it's legendary. So I don't really see the whole legend around this band. Still pretty good though. After Mordecai comes Scream. I'm not really sure what genre this would be, but it's not Death metal, not really fitting the sampler. I would have preferred this sampler to be fully Death metal, which would have sounded better in my opinion. Anyway, I don't really like these two songs, mostly because the vocals are bad, especially on If I Could Be. The other non-Death metalband is Hallowed, who sound a lot better than Scream. They play some kind of Melodic metal. The vocals are ok. The instruments on the song Storm are pretty cool though, with a drum and a bass solo. Overall I don't really mind their presence on this sampler. The last band was actually the band I was looking forward to the most. I heard hese two songs by Cruciferae a long time ago, I really liked them. Now I finally have them on CD. Great atmospheric sounding Melodic Death metal. Good screams, nice clean vocals. And, very important, great songstructures. The last song Man of Sorrows ends with a nice piano solo, finishing the CD. Overall I'd say it's not the best sampler out there. But songs like Deuteronomium's Spell of Hell and the Cruciferae songs make it worth listening to every once in a while.
Review by Max (April 13 - 2005)
|
|