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On the Radar: Temples

In my ignorant American world of generalizations, Scandinavia is divided thusly: Sweden gets death metal and stoner rock, Finland gets death/doom and folk metal, and Norway gets black? metal. Denmark doesn’t really get anything Thanks Arik Roper or someone just like him.other than the shaft and the occasional garage rock trio. All these countries have crossover bands, of course, I’m just talking about specialties, like local delicacies. It’s all fish anyway.

Blowing away my puny concept of what Finland can produce is the four-piece Temples from Helsinki. Checking them out was suggested to me by Obelisk attendee Shrike, and many thanks for the pointer, because I’ve been grooving on the Sleepy riffs and throaty pirate vocals ever since. They’re geared toward the jammier psych end of the tube amped spectrum, but their tones ride high in the ’90s tradition and it’s the kind of thickened stoner goo that just liquefies your mind and next thing you know it’s 20 minutes later and “The Ashes” is over.

It’s solid riff worship in the spirit of Electric Wizard, which is rarely a bad thing when a band decides, as Temples does, to keep it simple. They’d be a good pickup for MeteorCity, who seem similarly geared on the preservation and furthering the ’90s stoner sound, but in the meantime, Temples has tracks on their MySpace available for streaming, and have even more available for download on their website, which is more elaborate than any band site I’ve been to in a while. Usually it’s just a link to the MySpace. I guess Finland is full of surprises these days.

Temples – I

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5 Responses to “On the Radar: Temples”

  1. Mike says:

    Second time trying to access their site and I all I get is a page that looks like something from a late 80’s TRS-80. WTF!

    Could you please provide a link to their site’s music download page and then I’ll go from there?

    Thanks!

  2. Pekkarinen says:

    http://temples.fi/www/ is a less TSR-80ified version of the website.

    Cheers for featuring that jam!

  3. Shrike says:

    Mike: I find the site truly awesome, it has the UNIX-feel to it, but will be the first to admit that it might cause problems for casual passers by. Tip; type help to get… umm, help.

    Obelisk: Awesome that you picked up on this great band. The other bands in the list are also very much worth checking out, Dark Buddha Rising is coming out with their second vinyl offering in the next few weeks, which is on the top of my waiting list for the moment.
    I’ve got another batch of local bands for you to check out, but I’ll get back to those when I’ve got more time to write.

    On a bit of an “shameless self promotion” angle, check out my old band Abhorrence (old school death metal from 1990), I just uploaded some new tracks to MySpace, including two previously unreleased rehearsal ones. Click my nick, the URL is there ;)

  4. Mike says:

    JJ, Shrike is right, you should really check out Dark Buddha Rising. I’ve been diggin’ them for a while now.

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