Insomnium-One for Sorrow review

Having a diverse collection of metal music in one's collection allows for differing moods and differing tastes.  By its nature, metal music is a diverse genre and is growing ever more diversified.  New bands toy with new sounds, sometimes to varying effects.  Some bands find their niche sound and stick with it.

Finnish band Insomnium are of the latter category.  This band has been around for a long time and have released many good albums.  "Across the Dark" was an eye-opener, and "One for Sorrow" continues in this vein. 

Stylistically, this album is doom metal at heart, using many different keyboard and guitar based melodies to create a sorrowful, melancholic sound that is just as angry as it is sad.  The band overlays this tendency with vicious growling vocals almost continuously, leaving little room for clean vocals.  When these clean vocals appear, they are incredibly tasteful while retaining their metal edge. 

"One for Sorrow" begins and ends with complex melodies and mid-tempo rhythms.  These tempos vary throughout the album without the usual associated extreme highs and lows, that dominate so much doom metal.  Even through the sorrow, Insomnium manage to create catchy grooves and beautiful melodies often enough to capture interest throughout the disc.  As expected, keyboards are a large part of the Insomnium sound, as are the low, growling vocals.  This music is easy to listen to for fans of metal.  It should appeal to fans of doom, melodic death metal, and progressive metal. 

Many bands compare to Insomnium, but Insomnium pioneered the perfect blend between chunky melodeath and over-the-top doom.  This record is very balanced and instantly catchy.  Give it a listen and you may be impressed.  If you are a fan of Insomnium or Be'lakor, pick this album up.  Having somewhat outgrown the melodeath genre, I was at first skeptical regarding whether I would like this new disc.  Now that I have listened to it in its entirety, I feel that it is very much worth recommending.  Thanks for listening and, as always, enjoy!

Be'lakor-Of Breath and Bone review

We now take a break from your regularly scheduled post-rock review to bring you some metal.  I often talk about metal here, but the problem lately has simply been a lack of interesting new metal releases to review.  This year has been surprisingly short on new metal that I like, as opposed to say 2010-when dozens of bands I enjoy released new music.

One of the standouts this year from the metal genre has been the brand new album from Australia's Be'lakor.  To get a feel for what this band truly sounds like, let me refer you to the more popular bringers of melodic, progressive doom metal Insomnium.  Be'lakor's sound is as close as you can get to being a carbon copy of the aforementioned band, but much more progressive in sound and structure. 

On this album, plentiful doom melodies populate the more prominent portions of the music while progressive keys and acoustic plucking fill out the sound scape.  What makes this band so interesting are the prominent doom passages filled with simplistic, soulful guitar leads that slowly build in tempo and intensity towards what you would call a climax in the music.  This band pulls off this interesting effect masterfully, never sounding too simple, but staying safely away from technical wankery.  These melodies are heartfelt and memorable

The vocals this band employ contrast with the doomier elements in that they are excessively harsh and guttural.  The style of vocals you hear with this band are mid-range growls that sound neither like black metal howling nor Cookie Monster grunts.  This singer can also hold notes with this vocal style as long as the music dictates, leading to a more interesting listening experience. 

There are many bands that play a similar style of metal to Be'lakor, but few who do it so well.  I compared them to Insomnium, but I actually enjoy this band more than I do Insomnium.  It is good enough to nod your head to, angry enough to sound appealing, and melodic enough to be memorable.  I found their previous release, "Stone's Reach" to be powerful.  "Of Breath and Bone" promises the same power, but show the band further refining their sound.  If you are into metal music, especially with harsh vocals, check out this album.  Listen below.  Thanks for listening!