MP3: Amorphis - The brother-slayer
Finland's Amorphis was a very important and formative band for me when I first started to get interested in Scandinavian music. I first heard a song from the "Thousand lakes" album on a Relapse comp and was immediately blown away by the combination of brutal death metal and classic folk melodies. Integrating humppa polka with metal sounds like a perfectly awful idea on paper, but I assure you it works (witness the advent of Finntroll for an even better example, but that's a post for another Friday). Even better, the dark imagery of Finnish epic poem "The Kanteletar" from which the band derives their lyrics fit perfectly in metal. The band's next album "Elegy" in 1996 was a huge turning point for the band as they had just added 'clean' vocalist Pasi Koskinen and started to soften their sound. Of course, many in the death metal community were less that impressed, but I found the balance of old and new to be just right. Subsequent albums found the band going even softer and my attention has drifted elsewhere, but "Elegy" will always remain a highlight of my collection (though I hear their most recent is a return to form, I have yet to listen myself). Todays mp3 however, does not come directly from said album, but instead from the "My kantele" EP which came out soon afterwards. It's on the mellower side, so don't be scared off by my earlier mentions of brutal metal - it's not even close. The Hawkwind and Kingston Wall covers that also appear on the disc should give you a much better idea of where this is at genre-wise.
Amorphis - The brother-slayer