Tag Archives: Heavy Metal

Album Review: Anno 1696 by Insomnium

Those of you who’ve been following me for a while will be well aware of my love for all things heavy metal, and one of my favorite bands is Finland’s Insomnium – a long-standing staple of the melodic death metal their homeland is known for.

Insomnium have been releasing top-tier melodeath for over twenty years, starting with their debut LP In the Halls of Awaiting back in 2002. They rapidly struck a formula of balancing brutal riffs with melancholic, haunting melodies and harmonies, and have rarely deviated ever since. In fact, if there is a complaint to be lodged against Insomnium, is that each album doesn’t really feel like much of an evolution for the band. They tend to open every album with a intro track that blends seamlessly into an upbeat pop single, followed by a series of more forgettable, if more challenging, longer songs.

They changed this up in 2016 with the album Winter’s Gate, which took the form of a seven-part sequence of songs that actually form one massive 40-minute track. To date, this represents their most adventurous and progressive attempt, but they returned to their tried-and-true formula with 2019’s Heart Like a Grave (which actually contains, beyond the intro and pop single Valediction, some of their best and most accessible music to date).

So where does that leave their most recent release, Anno 1696 – a concept album based on a short story by bassist and vocalist Niilo Sevänen? Like Winter’s Gate, it eschews the standard album structure that Insomnium have used since 2002 in favor of eight slabs of equal-quality melodic death metal (although the opener, 1696, has the feel of an intro track, despite being over six minutes long). Two songs – White Christ and Godforsaken – mark the first open collaboration with vocalists outside of the band, with the first featuring Rotting Christ’s vocalist Sakis Tolis, and the second bringing a haunting melodic performance from Finnish folk singer Johanna Kurkela (also known from her collaborations with fellow Finns Sonata Arctica).

Each track is, as has always been the case with Insomnium, exceptionally well-produced and composed, and with the longest track clocking in at around eight and a half minutes, none of them outstay their welcome (in the past, some of their longer songs have felt a little overbearing). Blast beats are balanced with more tempered drumming, acoustic guitars blend well with heavy riffs, and melody – as to be expected – is paramount to each song. As the album progresses, odd time signatures and longer acoustic passages are a welcome break from the standard 4/4 heaviness that often drags this sort of music down.

However, for all of this, no one track feels terribly memorable, and whilst each is certainly distinct from the other, the album feels missing that one standout hit that Insomnium have been able to produce in the past. At 51 minutes, it’s also one of their shortest albums (only Winter’s Gate, the one-song album, and Across the Dark are shorter), and feels like it could have afforded an additional 4- or 5-minute track that really “pops”.

With that said, what is here is atmospheric, well-written, and fits the bill of a concept album about a witch perfectly. There’s no argument that Insomnium are at the top of their game musically, and the album’s structure does form a welcome break from the standard format that they’ve typically restricted themselves to. Although it can’t be said that it contains their best individual song to date, taken as a whole it is still one of their best albums, and for fans of melodic death metal is well-worth a good few listens to really appreciate the depth that it has to offer.

If you’re new to Insomnium, or want to explore melodic death metal for the first time, you’d be better off starting with Heart Like a Grave, or 2014’s Shadows of the Dying Sun, but if you’re familiar with the band already, then dive right in and enjoy another solid effort by Finland’s premier melodeath act.

4/5 stars

New Music Is Available!

So … when I’m not writing, it seems, I’m writing music. Whilst The Redemption of Erâth has been on pause for a few months, I’ve been revisiting some music I created between 2019 and 2021 – an album of symphonic metal called Despair.

Recently, I upgraded the orchestral sample libraries I use, and re-recorded all five tracks of the album using EastWest’s phenomenal samples and sound engine. Whilst the final result may not sound exactly like a live orchestra, it’s (in my mind, at least) pretty damn close.

So without further ado, I present to you: Despair, a suite of orchestral heavy metal in five parts, channeling the deepest, darkest emotions of human nature!

1: Depression

Depression is the first track from Despair, opening with quiet strings and horns, building to crescendo before the crushing heaviness of the metal band comes crashing in. Segueing to a softer, melodic verse section, things eventually take off with pounding guitars and drums, intertwining a full orchestra through rises and falls until a heavier recapitulation brings us to the outro – soft and quiet again, building into a sudden wall of orchestral noise and a thundering drum punctuation that leaves on a cliffhanger, waiting for the next track.

2: Anger

Bursting in with furious strings and brass, Anger ups the pace and energy tenfold, a full orchestra blasting away until dropping out suddenly to allow for the metal band to take over with churning, grinding riffs. Never giving in to a slower beat, the song carries forward in a kind of scherzo-and-trio format, building to a climax before a middle section that leads again with devastating riffs, before recapitulating to the opening. Finally drawing to close with every instrument at full tilt, Anger is a crushing ode to unbridled fury.

3: Fear

Opening with a rumbling, unsettled bass line, Fear is deliberately the most disjointed piece of the suite, wavering between numerous time and key signatures throughout. There are moments of melody interspersed between longer passages of chromatic atonality, but the overall mood is one of anxiety and unsettled, indescribable fearfulness.

4: Grief

Almost entirely orchestral (the band comes in only briefly at the very climax of the piece), Grief takes us through a journey of pathos and heartbreak, with sweeping strings and devastating horn lines drawing influence from the raw emotion of the greatest of classical composers – Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and more. From the soft, distant opening to the thundering timpani that bring the song to a heaving climax of sadness, Grief will tug at your heartstrings and (hopefully) give you chills at all the rights moments.

5: Despair

The epic conclusion and title track, Despair opens with a hammering timpani roll and huge, crashing chords from the band and full orchestra – nearly a full two minutes of opening to a 20-minute track that winds through many layers of instrumentation before coming to a quiet close halfway-through, only to burst back into life with grand horns and strings sustaining the melody over churning guitar riffs. Through a varied development we finally return to a grand reprise of the opening, announced with a huge gong crash, before moving on to the closing of the song, and the album, with a revisiting of the very opening of Depression, bringing the full album to a close.

Back … Maybe?

I can’t believe it’s been almost two months since I last posted here. As I think I predicted at the start of the year, I had a flurry of writing for most of January and a little bit of February, and then it just kind of … died.

The good news is that this time, it isn’t because I was cripplingly depressed. (I mean, I’m always a little depressed, but that wasn’t the main driver behind my inactivity.) In fact, I’ve been remarkably productive in the past month or two – just not with writing.

Rather, I’ve been busy with my spare time (which I feel I have less and less of) writing music. Years ago (I literally mean in like 2005) I started work on a metal ‘symphony’, by which I mean it’s structured like a classical symphony in four movements. I wrote about two-thirds of it years ago, then abandoned it in favor of writing, and later, more traditional metal music.

But I always intended to revisit it, and in particular produce it with a more modern aesthetic. So over Christmas and into January, I set about re-producing the parts I’d written so far, and completing the parts I hadn’t. And if I do say so myself, it came out pretty damn good!

And that’s not all – fresh off the wave of satisfaction that comes with completing a project, I decided to embark on a second metal symphony – this one including full orchestral instrumentation. So far it’s about half written, and sounding good.

So as you can see, I have been busy – just not with blogging and writing. Which is unfortunate in a way, of course, because I always intended to keep up with things here as well. We’ll see if I’m able to continue updates, Thoughts of the Week, and all that good stuff, but I wanted to check in at the very least and say hi, because I felt bad that I’d left this for such a long time.

As far as other projects go, I should be getting the edits back for my second YA novel from the editor today, for which I’m exceptionally excited; I’ve been waiting a while, and she’s been delayed (understandably, with COVID and everything), but I can’t wait to see what she has to say – so far apparently it’s made her cry (!).

The Redemption of Erâth is also progressing, if slowly; every so often I’ll try to write a little bit more of it, but I’ve lost – not the enthusiasm for it, but the drive, perhaps? I still want to complete the story, but there’s a lot ahead of me, and other projects just seem to keep getting in the way.

Writing is a lonely profession, and feels thankless, often; I write to get readers, not for money, and reviews are one of the few ways in which I know people are reading my books. And whilst I’ve amassed a fair few reviews for my YA work on Goodreads and Amazon, The Redemption of Erâth remains a little less … accessible, perhaps. I realize it’s a slow story, and I think this puts people off sometimes; in the years since its publication, I’ve only had fourteen reviews for the first book on Amazon, seven for the second, and exactly one for the third.

Still, it isn’t a reason to stop – the story must be written – and I will continue, however long it takes me, until the story of Brandyé, Elven and their companions is complete.

And in the meantime, I will try my best to continue posting here, as well as on cmnorthauthor.com, with updates, thoughts, and random things, because blogging is another way to connect with readers, and I actually really enjoy it.

So thank you until next time – which hopefully won’t be another month and a half!