As they’ve for so long shown an affinity for Finland’s national poem, the Kalevala, it seems somehow only fitting that 28 years after their founding, Amorphis‘ own story should be the stuff of a winding runic epic. Years of lineup changes, sonic evolution, genre definition and defiance have brought them to their 14th long-player, Queen of Time (on Nuclear Blast), with four of their original members in the six-piece lineup, and as they’re quick to show on the Jens Bogren-produced outing, the progression that began on 1992’s The Karelian Isthmus continues unabated. As they mark the return of original bassist Olli-Pekka “Oppu” Laine, with whom they last played on 1999’s Tuonela (discussed here), they embark on some of their most expansive sounds to-date, including not just the standout keyboard work of Santeri Kallio, who joined in 1999, but also flourish in the form of choral and orchestral arrangements and vocal appearances from Anneke van Giersbergen, who guests on the penultimate cut “Amongst Stars,” and longtime lyricist Pekka Kainulainen, who contributes a speech in Finnish to third track “Daughter of Hate.”

That song runs as part of a momentum-building first half of the album that, from the intro to opener “The Bee” through “Message in the Amber,” “Daughter of Hate,” and “The Golden Elk” and “Wrong Direction,” move with experienced poise through the band’s long-established dynamic of folk, death and progressive metals, vocalist Tomi Joutsen (also Hallatar) — who since coming aboard with 2006’s Eclipse (also their label debut on Nuclear Blast) has now been in the band nearly twice as long as his predecessor, Pasi Koskinen — switching easily between guttural growls and dramatic, emotionally driven clean singing.

The clash of the beautiful and the brutal has been at the core of what Amorphis do for over 20 years, since 1996’s groundbreaking third album, Elegy, but whether it’s the chugging riff of “The Bee” meeting with a string arrangement and keyboard launching into the chorus or the later “Grain of Sand” finding Joutsen layering soaring melodies over growls as drummer Jan Rechberger pounds away behind and lead guitarist Esa Holopainen touches on minor-key Easternisms as a chorus backs the bridge to the next onslaught, Amorphis have never quite made the transitions so fluid. Part of that is the melding of melody and extremity as on “Daughter of Hate,” which brings in saxophone around the two-minute mark after a particularly brutal opening, but Bogren, who seems to have been the mastermind behind bringing the choral and orchestral arrangements into the proceedings, can only be considered right for having done do.

Even the band’s also-string-inclusive preceding album, 2015’s Under the Red Cloud, which Bogren also oversaw amid a host of engineers, didn’t push as far as “The Bee” or “Message in the Amber,” the latter touching almost on Blind Guardian-style grandiosity in its second half. That’s not a complaint. Even as later cut “We Accursed” holds to a “rawer” approach with its Finn-folk bounce and swirling keyboard solo over a start-stop riff from Holopainen and fellow founder/rhythm guitarist Tomi Koivusaari, Amorphis seem to be expanding on the ideas of Under the Red Cloud, pushing themselves further in multiple directions and still leaving room for hooks like that of “Wrong Direction” or the memorable finale in “Pyres on the Coast” that seems to bring all sides together and round out with Kallio on a still-somehow-appropriate church organ.

But that is what Amorphis does, and it’s what they’ve always done. Save perhaps between 1994’s Tales from the Thousand Lakes and the aforementioned Elegy, their growth has never come in leaps and bounds — and part of that was personnel change — but it’s been a consistent truism of their work that each outing builds off the accomplishments of the one before it, and refuses to stay in the same place. In the now-seven albums they’ve done since Eclipse, when Joutsen came aboard, they’ve been ever more aware of who they are as a band — that is, there are some things an Amorphis record needs to be an Amorphis record, and they seem to consciously tick those boxes — but never afraid to refine their processes and push themselves in ways they haven’t before. As such, the 10 tracks/57 minutes of Queen of Time are multifaceted and rife with breadth, but the core sonic persona of who Amorphis have become — itself true to the band’s name for its ever-changing shape — has remained true.

They are one of a kind in metal, and whatever subgenre one might want to peg them into, they’ll never quite fit all the way. That’s true of the galloping “Heart of the Giant,” the careening delivery of the title-line in “The Golden Elk,” and the piano line that runs under “Amongst Stars,” as the meticulousness of Amorphis‘ songwriting, the sheer clarity and detail of it, makes them an ever more complex and ever more immersive listening experience. Invariably, with a band who’ve been around so long produced such a catalog, fans have their favorites, so I won’t say Queen of Time is the “best” Amorphis album, because the designation is meaningless. However, it is the farthest stage yet reached of their ongoing progression and it claims its place in their catalog as an utter triumph in its achievement. For established fans or open-minded newcomers, it should not be missed.

Amorphis, “Wrong Direction” official video

Amorphis website

Amorphis on Thee Facebooks

Amorphis at Nuclear Blast website

Tags: Amorphis, Amorphis Queen of Time, Finland, Helsinki, Nuclear Blast Records, Queen of Time

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2018 at 4:05 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.