Insomnium – One For Sorrow

The metal heaven is certainly in Scandinavia. Norway dominates in Black Metal, Sweden in old school Death Metal and Finland in Melodic Death Metal (without  exempt the Swedish bands from this genre). Someone can easily notice that bands like Kalmah, Eternal Tears of Sorrow, Children of Bodom, early Amorphis and other Finnish bands play qualitative Melodic Death and have done great success. Insomnium are added to these bands. “One for Sorrow” is now released just for the melancholic winter days.

I believe that Insomnium is an underrated band, at least in my country. The truth is that they are playing such an incredible Melodic Death Metal, that is difficult to find a similar band. Unlike of many of their compatriots, Insomnium are presenting pure melancholy. Having played along with many big names such as Dark Tranquility, Enslaved and Katatonia,,definitely they have been  popular in a wide range of people. The band members are together since 2001 and after the great albums “Above the Weeping World” and “Across the Dark” are now releasing the most mature work, in my opinion.

Insomnium get darker and darker in every album. “One for Sorrow” couldn’t be an exception. Puss the “Play” button and the dark atmosphere will be releasing from your speakers by the introduction of  “Inertia”. I cant’s find a low rated track in this album. Also, it’s difficult to name a song as the album’s finest and the reason is that “One for Sorrow” is a very solid album. Such a complex guitar riffs, flexible drums, massive brutal vocals, along with atmospheric keyboards that the band transmits the wailing feeling to the listener. Some tracks that have praised my mind,among the others, are “Through The Shadows”, “Song of the Blackest Bird”, “Unsung” and the homonym track at the end. “Through the Shadows” is probably the most catchy song of the album.  From the first second starts the storming melody of the guitar. With the combination of both full-throated growls and clean vocals the album has a dynamic opening which is the purpose of the guitar’s wall of melody. After this it is following the “Song of the Blackest Bird”. The band shares pain and grief generously in this song. The epic D tuning riff, the convenience of the drummer , the whispers and  Niilo’s vocals made it so stunning that you can’t leave unnoticed this song in anyway. “Unsung” follows the same way, but here the applause are going to the drummer. The homonym songs is truly a hymn. A catatonic melody accompanies you at the 6 minutes of the song.

Generally, the other songs have similar music structure, as the other that I mentioned. “Only Who Waits” and “Every Hour Wounds” have very  heavy riffs, furious drums and mourning melody. And even slow songs of the album are remarkable, like “Lay the Ghost to Rest”. After the fast riffing of the previous songs, this track is coming to hammer the listener with melancholy and has very good atmosphere too. Also, the next track “Regain the Fire” has the same attitude as its previous. Finally, there is a bonus track,”Weather the Storm” with the participation of Mikael Stanne. If you’ll listen it, you’ll know why it is only in the limited edition.

Here we have another incredible  album from the Finnish band. As I said it is a very solid album. The listener break immediately in small emotional pieces and it’s hard to reconstruct them. Insomnium are doing  it very good. As well as in the predecessor albums, in “One for Sorrow” the band didn’t change it’s style. Also, here the drums are brought up to a higher level and the guitars are equally prominent. But now the standards are very high for their next work. Well, I don’t believe that Insomnium will disappoint us in the future. They never did this. “Always one for sorrow, never one for love”.