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Rating: The subtitle of this work, quite simply, is "Tales From The Early Years." Therefore, this is not an album of unreleased tracks, but it is a reinterpretation in the "new style" of old glories belonging to the early albums of the Finnish group Amorphis. The reason for this maneuver, which could easily be accused of being purely commercial? The new (so to speak, given the more than five years of presence in the group) singer Tomi Joutsen, with his good warm and versatile voice, and the greater resources available to the band manage to justify such a release.
More or less in chronological order, the pieces of this "Magic & Mayhem" unfold from the most canonical melodic death of the title track and "Vulgar Necrolatry," to the much more complex and significant songs taken from the "middle" albums (Elegy primarily, perhaps the masterpiece of the early days).
The tracks are, of course, presented with greater sound quality and production, these are not simple remixes, but new performances that do not structurally differ from the originals; yet, the whole thing has the merit of not seeming contrived and overall the tracks regain a new freshness.
The metal heard in this hour of music is decidedly melodic, as per the band's tradition, namely a heavy/death that, along with a constant typically seventies aura (old-style guitar riffs, keyboards borrowed from Yes, with due proportions), consistently adds never too extreme doom slowdowns. The frontman is decidedly talented, more incisive than his predecessor, and alongside deep growls, he inserts clean voice parts, with quite a low tone.
The most successful tracks in this new guise are those endowed with more melody and references to classic rock: "Song Of The Troubled One," already immense in its original form, boasts successful arrangements and a typically progressive keyboard melodic base. It truly feels like listening to an old school prog-rock band that decided to turn up the volumes, complete with guitar wah-wahs for the joy of vintage lovers (among whom the writer counts himself). "Black Winter Day" has more of a doom flavor, with a powerful pace and guitar delights that denote both melodic taste and good technique; noteworthy is the central keyboard solo in which the specter of Yes and ELP emerges not even too subtly.
"On Rich And Poor" is a more canonical and straightforward heavy metal song, with a nice baroque riff in evidence. The album concludes with the most well-known piece, the beautiful "My Kantele", a song capable of pleasing both the harshest metaller and the romantic damsel: an exceptional chorus and successful keyboard and guitar solos lead to an exciting finale. Unless one owns the special edition, which features a pleasant but nothing more bonus track: it is the famous "Light My Fire" of Doorsian memory, proposed faithfully instrumentally, and equipped with the usual growls, misplaced here.
For those who wish to listen to the album, the advice is not to be misled by the very first tracks that do not do justice, neither in style nor in quality, to the rest of the work.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Magic And Mayhem (00:00)
Hey there, tiny wench
My perpetual serf
Put stew in a pot
Bring water for the guest
Before we part
Before your neck is broken
You strike first
Son of the north
03 Drowned Maid (00:00)
I went to wash at the shore
I went to bathe in the sea
And there I, a hen, was lost
I, a bird
Untimely died
Let not my brother
Ever in this world
Water his war-horse
Upon the seashore!
Waters of the sea
So much blood of mine
Fishes of the sea
So much flesh of mine
Such the death of the young maid
End of the fair little hen
04 Against Widows (00:00)
The Devil weds a widow
Death another's leftovers
Better to lie on a willows
Rest on alder boughs
Than upon a widow's bed
On a used woman's pillow
Sweeter the side of a fence
Than a widow's flank
Softer the side of a groove
Than a widow's beside is
The Devil weds a widow
The grave one twice wed
A widow's hand is rougher
Than a dry spruce bough
With which she strikes the playful
Grabs the one who laughs
A widow has had her games
And spent a merry evening
05 My Kantele (00:00)
Truly they lie, they talk utter nonsense
Who say that music reckon that the kantele
Was fashioned by a god
Out of a great pike's shoulders
From a water-dog's hooked bones:
It was made from the grief
Moulded from sorrow
Its belly out of hard days
Its soundboard from endless woes
Its strings gathered from torments
And its pegs from other ills
So it not play, will not rejoice at all
Music will not play to please
Give off the right sort of joy
For it was fashioned from cares
Moulded from sorrow.
07 Vulgar Necrolatry (00:00)
Erosion of life I see
it makes the passion burn in me
Life it always withers away
Death will eternally stay
Corpses in their coffins
forever rest in peace?
There sleeping with the aspergillus
is this justice to the dead?
The atrocious sight of burial ecremony
Christians weeping for the departed
They won't understand, they should envy them!
The deceased they know, if there's a paradise
Or shall we feel, the purgatory!
I open the graves, admire the rot
I can feel the presence, of something beyond
Aureola of nauseating reek
Wings of shriveled skin
Holy beauty of a carcass
Divine sight for me to gaze upon!
Necrolatic! Reverence for putrefaction
Necrolatic! reverence for the stench
I kneel, before a carrion
I pray, before the dead
I know, they shall rise
I fear, for the scourge
I revere, power of the dead
08 Into Hiding (00:00)
The islander slips into hiding
And takes to his heels
Out of dark Northland
The murky house of Sara
He whirled out of doors as snow
Arrives as smoke in the yard
To flee from bad deeds
There he had to become someone else
He must change his shape
As an eagle he swept up
Wanted to soar heavenward
The sun burnt his cheeks
The moon lit his brows
09 Black Winter Day (00:00)
This is how the lucky feel
How the blessed man think
Like a daybreak in spring
The sun on a spring morning
Like the flat brink of a cloud
Like a dark night in autumn
But how do I feel in my gloomy depths?
This is how the lucky feel
How the blessed man think
Like a daybreak in spring
Like the flat brink of a cloud
Like a dark night in autumn
A black winter day
This is how the lucky feel
How the blessed man think
Like a daybreak in spring
The sun on a spring morning
Like the flat brink of a cloud
Like a dark night in autumn
A black winter day
No darker than that
Gloomier than an autumn night
A black winter day
10 On Rich And Poor (00:00)
Old folk remember
And those today learn
How before their time
Life was different here:
Without the sun people lived
Groped about without the moon
With candles sowing was done
Planting performed with torches.
At the time we lived
Without the sunshine
Who had covered up our sun
And who had hidden our moon?
Without the moonlight stumbled
With our fists fumbled the land
With ourhands we sought out roads
With hands roads, with fingers swamps
We could not live without sun
Nor manage without moonlight;
Who would seek out the sun
Who spy out the moon?
Who else if not God
The one son of God?
12 The Castaway (00:00)
A bird flew out of Lapland
An eagle from the Northeast
One wing ruffled the water
And the other swept the sky
It's tail skimmed the sea
It flutters, it glides
It looks, it turns round
"Why, man, are you in the sea
Fellow, among the billows?"
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