Silent Waters

Amorphis – Under the Red Cloud Review

Amorphis – Under the Red Cloud Review

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 Recordingsā„¢ 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!

Amorphis – Circle Review

Amorphis – Circle Review

“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.

Amorphis – The Beginning of Times Review

Amorphis – The Beginning of Times Review

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 – Forging the Land of Thousand Lakes Review

Amorphis – Forging the Land of Thousand Lakes Review

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.

Amorphis – Skyforger Review

Amorphis – Skyforger Review

Amorphis is easily one of my favorite bands producing metal in the 2000s. Over the last few years I’ve seen a lot of the bands that I really got into when I was a young, impressionable metal guy start to get more and more popular as they got picked up by bigger labels, got put out on the market, and as metal got cool again (who’da thunk it?)–bands like Opeth, Enslaved, Amon Amarth and others. Amorphis, however, had fallen off my radar, and I think a lot of people’s radars, before they got themselves a new vocalist. A man of small stature, and huge personality and voice: Tomi Joutsen. For whatever reason, this breathed life into the venerable, and quite excellent, band taking them out of their temporary lull and pushing them to the forefront with the bands putting out the best modern metal has to offer.