Halo is Amorphis’s 14th studio album and 2022 marks the 30th anniversary since The Karelian Isthmus first graced this world, and at this point, Amorphis sounds like no one but Amorphis. After 30 years of Amorphis, will they ever bow before the might of Angry Metal Guy’s Law of Diminishing Recordings?
In honor of the release of Halo on the 11th of February (that’s this Friday), from Atomic Fire Records, we here at AngryMetalGuy.com are giving you a rock-solid grounding in the band this website has stolen all its logos from.
I have to say that Amorphis’ The Beginning of Times is one of the most anticipated records of the year and it marks a little bit of an Angry Metal Milestone, as it was my review of Skyforger that really was the first review I posted that blew up and attracted a lot of new visitors. It’s been a busy couple years since the band released Skyforger, having released a live DVD and a disc with re-recordings of the band’s older material, they’ve really been everywhere (except here in Sweden playing shows that I could attend). But I think it’s fair to say that my expectations for The Beginning of Times were through the roof and when I finally received the promo I was practically shaking with anticipation to get tracks into iTunes and to slap on the monitors.
Amorphis is a band that needs no introduction, particularly if you’ve been reading this zine for more than a few weeks. When Skyforger came out in 2009, I was fortunate enough to be able to catch it on MySpace at the time and put up a review of it on this site: it was actually one of the first things that started increasing traffic to this site. At the time that I wrote the review I was particularly laudatory of the band’s new material. Despite the wave against them because they never re-wrote The Karelian Isthmus or Tales from the Thousand Lakes again, I have been nothing but enchanted by the last three albums. They are, for lack of a better word, genius. Modern, melodic metal done with class and style, Eclipse, Silent Waters and Skyforger are three of the best album from the 2000s and have re-established the legacy of a band that has seemed to have lost its way at times.
