### Insomnium: Across the dark

#### 17/05/10 || cadenz

Do you like Amorphis up until “Elegy”? Swallow the Sun? Pre-“Reroute to Remain” In Flames? Congratulations, now you can minimize your CD collecting costs and focus on just one band instead, the Finnish Insomnium, who manage to sound like all of those bands at the same time. Sadly, which is the only Finnish way, they don’t have the same upside as the three aforementioned bands. Still, if you’re looking for a quick slab of above-average easy-listening melodic and melancholic metal with growl vox, look no further.

A sombre atmosphere and melancholic melodies are the focal points on “Across the Dark”, and that’s what Insomni-cum do best. Without resorting to clean vocals too often, virtually every second of every song is ultra-melodic due to the fact that at least one guitar is always doing leads (harmonies are found aplenty), while the rhythm guitar is pumping away on his power chords. This isn’t bad at all, and I rarely dislike anything I hear, but a big problem is conformity. Everything sounds the same. Insomnium almost never stray away from the regular minor scale (Aeolian for you music theorists), and this creates of course a sense of unity between the tracks but it also blends them all together into one big soft mush without edges. Some variation wouldn’t have hurt. You pricks.

The growl vocals remind me somewhat of Johan Hegg of Amon Amarth, and the cleans courtesy of guests are OK (e.g. not too whiny.) Nothing special in the instrumental department, good and tight drumming and guitar playing but nothing fancy. Some fast double kicks here and there which are very nice when they kick in (har, har) but those are so common these days they don’t really deserve an extra mention. Which they just did. Fuck. Vocalist Sevänen also handles the bass, and gets a plus for some nice and imaginative lines. These come to the fore-front mainly in some of the more subdued parts, which have something of a smoky prog rock feel to them, and are probably the bits I enjoy the most on “Across the Dark”.

The big selling point for this album is the melancholic atmosphere, which is heightened by occasional piano and strings breaks. I have to say I enjoy “ATD” more and more the longer I listen to it, the conformity of the tracks almost reaching a hypnotizing level. So, if you want to shut off your brain to some moody and melodic metal, which you will have no memory whatsoever of afterwards, Insomnium could be for you. I’ve heard they’re a good non-description drug to cure…yeah, you know.

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Candlelight
- Website: www.insomnium.net
- Band
- Niilo Sevänen: vocals, bass
- Ville Friman: guitar
- Ville Vänni: guitar
- Marcus Hirvonen: drums
- Jules Näveri: clean vocals (guest)
- Aleksi Munter: keyboards (guest)

- Tracklist
- 01. Equivalence
- 02. Down With the Sun
- 03. Where the Last Wave Broke
- 04. The Harrowing Years
- 05. Against the Stream
- 06. Lay of the Autumn
- 07. Into the Woods
- 08. Weighed Down With Sorrow