Apparently Finland is Awesome

In the effort to discover new music, I use some web services to offer suggestions. Pandora and Last.FM are both fine resources for this purpose.

Recently I noticed that many of the bands that were being recommended to me had a common link: They were all Finnish.

Today we explore the music that this Icy land brings to us, and revel in it’s glory!

For my primarily American Audience, we will start with the obvious.  Children of Bodom are one of the most recognizable bands from Finland, and have set the bar for the Black/Power type of metal that the country is known for. Live footage of their song “Follow the Reaper”

Next, the now defunct Misery, Inc. Played from 2001-2008 and had a metalcore sound.  While talented, the inconsistency in their sound did suffer. Video for “Fallen Rage”

Insomnium veer more to the Melody driven side of Death Metal as seen in their song “Mortal Share”

Fitting into more of a Gothic metal, but still with melodic death overtones, comes Before the Dawn.  Started as a solo project by Tuomas Saukkonen, the music is somewhat varied from straight metalcore to more melodic songs like “Deadsong.”

Amorphis also is heavily melody driven.  Falling more into the Symphonic Metal camp, they sound like a mix of Sonata Arctica and Opeth to me.  Live footage for their song “The Smoke”

Kalmah is pure European Death Metal (you can tell because they use keyboards, unlike American Death Metal).  The acting in their video for “12 Guage” is… something else.

Imperanon are another now-defunct band.  They only managed a single full length album, Stained, and it is too bad, as that album showed promise.  Clearly inspired by Children of Bodom.  Never has a proper video, but through the magic of youtube, we can still enjoy.

Eternal Tears of Sorrow falls into the Gothic Death realm. Again a band without an official video, but with some dedicated fans who make some fine showings in the unofficial video camp.  Like this one for “Burning Flames Embrace”

Omnium Gatherum has a bit more experimental sound, while clearly influenced by the northern Europe Power/Death scene, they play with thrash and metalcore.  Video for “Nail”

Finally, no discussion of Finland would be complete without discussing Finntroll, who play a folk inspired type of music, and are mostly bizarre compared to the others on this list.  Still I find them kind of fun in the same way I find Alestorm enjoyable. Video for “Trollhammeren”

~ by zombinate on April 22, 2010.