Date: 2020
Total Time: Noble Demon
Label: Noble Demon
As if awakened from their slumber, the band and also side project of the busy Tuomas Saukkonen, releases a new album for the first time since 2006, called “Waves”.
Fourteen years later, this effort comes to us, like a long-awaited expectation. Tuomas’ side projects are innumerable. Of course, he is the singer and bassist in his main band, and a super popular one, WOLFHEART, but also he has released albums with “BEFORE THE DAWN”, “BLACK SUN AEON” and other bands. He himself is responsible for the music here, as well as all the instruments, and leaves the clear vocals to an old acquaintance of his from BLACK SUN AEON, Mikko Heikkilä, whose voice is clear as crystal, melancholic, magical, tripping. The instruments and the production of course are doing an excellent job and you can hear very clearly up to the slightest note.
The music is not reminiscent of WOLFHEART. This needs to be made clear from the beginning, as it is logical that many have already asked this question in their minds. Gothic, dark, ambient Metal, with gothic elements and plenty of melody, maybe some elements from the Swedish melodic Death sound. Gothic elements, because the music is quite monotonous, mid-tempo, it seems repetitive, and the feeling of joy and light is missing. Ambient and dark, because it takes you to another dark landscape. The elements of the melodic Death sound are here and there, as many riffs are melodic, clear, catchy and the solos the same.
The emotions that occupy your mind as you listen to this album? Melancholy, for what once was. Sadness for what is now. Despair, for what will never come. Beauty and anticipation mixed in one feeling, for what you imagine that might (and not may) one day come. The light is not absent. The light is dark… This leads this album. Cold, icy atmosphere. It’s like one is waiting for the dawn to come at any given moment, except that it never happens. It is the melody that makes you expect the best, but in the end, melancholy and sadness always win. Why does the night never come to an end? Because the night has defeated the day. And it feels like one knows that, but even so, he feels optimistic about the coming of the daylight, but also knows this may never happen. It’s a terribly simple album (though this is not a bad thing at all) and at the same time binary. Anticipation of positive emotion, arrival of negative emotion. In that sense, it is as simple as that.
So many years later, an effort that cannot and should not go unnoticed. Tuomas Saukkonen. This name alone is enough to tell us everything. Some say that the greatest inspirations come from negative emotions. And they are not wrong.
Rating: 6.5/10
Author: George Kourou
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