Recent updates
- S(crap)s: I Miss My Death / Kaoskult / Raus & Perunwit (split) / Spatial / Thy Flesh (13/06/14)
- Hatebreed: The rise of brutality (12/06/14)
- Vomiting Corpses: Coma - The spheres of innocence (11/06/14)
- Mayhem: Esoteric warfare (10/06/14)
- S(crap)s: Akrotheism / Black Altar / Druknroll / Enthroned / Funeral Sutra (09/06/14)
- Agalloch: The serpent & the sphere (08/06/14)
- Dark Tranquillity: Construct (07/06/14)
- In Flames: The jester race (06/06/14)
- S(crap)s: Souldrainer / Tonic Breed / Rude / Defying / Electric Hellride / Scorned Disciple (05/06/14)
- Culted: Oblique to all paths (04/06/14)
- read
Recent discussions
Reviews
Ajattara: Äpäre
07/04/06 || Statik Majik
Without Ajattara I probably wouldn’t have started to listen to bands that sing in Finnish. You see, it’s probably one of the worst languages ever to be used in lyrics and it takes nearly a genious to come off of this task. Well, let me introduce you to Ruoja, the mainman behind Ajattara. When I heard their debut album, “Itse”, I finally got convinced that it is possible to do plausible and evil Finnish lyrics for metal songs.
The formula that was represented to us on “Itse” still holds up. I usually tend to complain if bands release similar discs one after another, but not always. Ajattara’s albums sound alot like each other without being exact copies of themselves. What I’m trying to say is that Ajattara is not trying to re-invent the wheel again. And they don’t need to. There’s been some minor progress on each disc they’ve released, but this time they’ve taken a huge step forward and managed to create something extraordinary with the very same ingredients found on their earlier material.
Dark lyrics, black metal stylish vocals, heavy fucken guitars with straightforward riffs, a decent amount of keyboards, doublebass, you name it. Musicwise it could be loosely labeled as slow-tempo death metal, if you absolutely demand a categorization. And the icing of the cake happens to be the perfect production that makes this sound agressively heavy. Everything matches so fucken well here that it ain’t even funny, even if I am smiling while listening to “Äpäre”. But that’s a satisfied smile you get when you hear something extremely good and powerful, you know.
On previous Ajattara releases Ruoja handled most of the instruments and they always entered the studio as a three-piece. That’s probably the major difference on “Äpäre” compared to their stuff released prior to this. Now there’s five musicians participating in the recording process. I’m not sure if that’s the reason why “Äpäre” sounds more varied than anything they’ve done before. Or it could be that Ruoja has just been extremely creative while composing the material, who knows? The fact that he didn’t have to play that many instruments in the studio obviously gave him even more time to concentrate on the singing, because he never sounded this… well, hostile. For whatever reasons the result is fucken amazing. The strongest Ajattara album to date. Seriously. The few tracks that especially stand out from the album are “Raato” and “Tahtomattaan syntynyt”, they’re just… perfect.
I fucken love this. Did you hear me? I fucken love this! Every godforsaken second of it.
Low and behold: I’m about to give “Äpäre” a score you don’t see me give that often. Actually the only two albums worthy of this rating are “Armageddon March Eternal” and “Hate, Dominate, Congregate, Eliminate” by my favourite band The Project Hate MCMXCIX. And here’s the third, even though it has absolutely nothing in common with The Project Hate MCMXCIX.
9 /10
- Information
- Released: 2006
- Label: Spikefarm
- Website: www.ajattara.com
- Band
- Ruoja: vocals, guitars
- Atoni: bass
- Samuel Lempo: guitars
- Irstas: keyboards
- Malakias III: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Hurmasta
- 02. Raato
- 03. Säälin koira
- 04. Lautuma
- 05. Eksyneet
- 06. Hirsipuulintu
- 07. Tahtomattaan syntynyt
- 08. Itse
- 09. Koito
- 10. Syntyni
