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.
“Angry Metal Guy‘s Law of Diminishing Recordings™ will rear its head eventually. Nearly every revered band in the metal scene has seen a glorious upsurge followed by a progressive diminishing over time. It’s been literally thirty years since my favorite album of all time was released, which is the same year that Metallica released …and Justice for All. Neither band fully recovered. In fact, all of my favorite bands from when I was 25 have grown increasingly uninspiring. Except Amorphis.” Fight the law!
“Under the Red Cloud marks the 12th studio album from Finland’s grandfathers of extreme metal, the band’s sixth LP with Tomi Joutsen as vocalist and his 10th year in the band. The string of Tomi’s six records started with 2006’s Eclipse and had an absolutely epic beginning. Eclipse, Silent Waters and Skyforger showed the band’s new found drive and energy, reclaiming some of their death metal heritage, while veering further into what Nuclear Blast has fittingly labeled ‘melancholy rock.’ Unfortunately, Angry Metal Guy’s Law of Diminishing Recordings™ is a fickle mistress, and The Beginning of Times and Circle were both records that were good, but lacked the urgency of that initial trilogy.” Angry Metal Guy is back reviewing Amorphis, and do you kids know what that means? It means he’s probably not doing his actual job! Now read the damned review!
“I can judge a book by its cover. And I always do it. I even take the tome in my hands and I weigh it. Yes, I weigh books and decide whether or not I should go on reading the blurb on the usually polished, sensually pleasant cover. If the words convince me and the overall product smells good, I put it back on the shelves and I resume cruising through the aisles like a junkie who has learned that the best fix comes from the filthy hands of fellow addicts. They know better. In music, I follow the same criteria. I don’t get fooled too easily by a press agent all too eager to impress someone who enjoys weighing books in shopping centers on a Tuesday morning. I mean, come on.” Alex weighs both life and literature… and music. Yes, he’s like Anubis, weighing and judging all things. And now it’s Circle’s turn to be measured.
“There is a tendency, among music critics, to emphasize anything even vaguely related to experimentalism. For them, any album that smacks of avant-garde is either ‘a step forward’ or simply ‘beyond’. The trajectory, the direction and what boundaries the sound has allegedly trespassed are details that are almost always left undisclosed. The end result is that there is no critique, but instead an endless succession of attributes, excerpts and frustration.” Alex indicts the entire music reviewing industry as he digs into the interesting release by Mamiffer & Circle. Give us Hell, Alex!!
‘“Why did you start making music?” I asked, while pretending to sip the amazingly cheap red wine in my half-broken glass, scouting for what was left of my dignity while lying on the cold floor. I don’t think he ever gave me an answer, but there are times when Daniel O’Sullivan does not even bother formulating a reply. He breathed out another puff, I turned my head and gave an intoxicated nod to the ceiling while looking nowhere ahead of me. Grumbling Fur’s music is exactly like that whiff. It is not an answer because nobody has ever posed the right question.” If we ever needed someone to decipher that whiff of smoke, you know we’d call Alex to do so. He speaks smoke and obscurity, after all.
“If Amorphis fanboyism was an infectious disease, the AMG offices would surely be quarantined due to the terminal cases both AMG and myself suffer from. I’ve always regarded their Tales From the Thousand Lakes as the greatest melo-death album of all time, and few bands can boast a run of releases as consistently brilliant as Eclipse through Skyforger. The Beginning of Times had some great songs, but was overlong, a bit bloated and dragged badly on the back-end. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in expecting a big bounce back from the Finnish titans, and it was with typically high expectations that I welcomed the Circle promo when it finally arrived.” Amorphis is the big fish in the thousand lakes of Finnish metal, but will Circle keep them at the top of the food chain or consign them to the role of bottom feeder? Join Steel Druhm as he fishes for answers.
