Alright, I'd like to start off with this album, Moonsorrow - Verisäkeet (Blood verses). Compared to the previous releases of Moonsorrw, this album had a dramatic change in the style of the band. The old "pagan referring" viking swords and armoury had practically ended into a trash can and the band took a huge (also a risky) leap forward becoming a more serious music artist. As Moonsorrows members had said that their previous album already got everything the genre has to offer, so it's necessary to make something different. I'm glad they did.
Where the previous album, "Kivenkantaja", had a very bombastic pagan metal soundscape, Verisäkeet had ditched nearly all the previous concepts and took a step towards thrash and black metal, yet still being true to the bands own description of itself "epic heathen metal".
When this album first came out in 2005, I didn't really know if I liked it or not, it definitely wasn't something I had expected, but it sure was still Moonsorrow. It probably took me a few listen-throughs to get a good image of the songs, and the album. A challenging album, with a playtime of full 70 minutes.
The first three songs work as the main emphasis of the album, by creating the atmosphere and establishing the theme, being dark, heavy and brsitly. Even the songs are quite long in comparsion, they never feel repeatitive or tiresome, rather keeping the listener interested in listening the song from the beginning to the end. I have to admit, managing to create songs like this one after another must require some serious composing skill and devotion.
The first 43 minutes of gruesome melodies passes surprisingly fast, as the song "Dark" begins to fade, it gives the listener a little time to take a breath. "Jotunheim" begins the calm section of the album, yet still reminding the listener of what he went through before, with a very strong grasp. It does well tieing up the storm of the beginning and ending it with a respective outro. There's a long silence between Jotunheim and the final song, a fully achoustic "Kaiku", which is a nice exception, giving a relived ending to the whole. There's a new day after the long night.
As a conclusion, Verisäkeet is one of those albums which you might not like at first, but later on find it being one of your favourites. In my opinion, it definitely is a very good and solid album and stands on its own position in the Moonsorrow discography, but because it is a result of a radical music style change, it has a faint experiment -type of feeling in it.
-Edit note: filled some details in the review and conclusion part.
A little late, but I decided to listen to this.
ReplyDeleteIt was just like you said. At first I didn't really care for it but I listened to a couple more songs and found myself getting into to it quite a bit.
Good album, bro.