Entry 567 - Amorphis - Elegy

Style: Progressive death metal with experimental elements

Primary Emotions/Themes: Finnish folklore

Thoughts: Where do I start with an album like this? There is so much going on here, so many facets to cover. I don't know where to start or where to finish. 

I guess well start at the beginning, as all stories do. Amorphis started off as one of the early death metal bands from Finland but quickly started differentiating themselves by incorporating some progressive elements into their second album. This along with clean vocals made the band live up to their name: ever changing, never stagnant. This all came to a head on Elegy.

Elegy is the band's third album and it is a defining moment of the band. The band has truly begun to shed all of the pure death metal roots at this point. While some growls do remain, the main vocal focus here is Pasi's cleans. The duet of him and Tomi work exceptionally well on this album, and unfortunately this is the only time we would see that in the bands career as Tomi would stop all vocal duties after Elegy.

Musically the band has fully embraced the progressive tendencies of Tales From the Thousand Lakes. Elegy embraces everything that the band could think of: sitar, Hammond organ, acoustic guitars, strings, keyboards, electronic experimentation, crazy song structures. The band really threw the kitchen sink at the song writing process with Elegy. 

To be honest the first few times I hear the album it was a bit much. It sounded like a disjointed mess to me and I went back to listening to later albums which were my preference at the time. As I grew older though I revisited the album and I found the true wonder that is Elegy.

The music isn't disjointed, it's more like an excited kid looking through an attic and finding treasures. The band has a cohesive sound throughout, but they mix it with many other genres because... well they can. Why not? No one was saying no at this point, so why wouldn't you experiment? Do all of them work? No not really, but enough of them do to make this album something special.

I don't think that anything captures the essence of this album more than the song My Kantele. The lyrics and the music speak to the sorrow and the pain that real music is made from. The band put it best so I'll close this out with their own words:

Truly they lie, they talk utter nonsense
Who say that music reckon that the kantele
Was fashioned by a god...

It's belly out of hard days
Its soundboard from endless woes
Its strings gathered from torments
And its pegs from other ills

Written October 3rd 2023