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 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