Moonsorrow
Tulimyrsky

An EP. A small collection of tracks that usually serves as an appetizer for the future feast of completed songs, which are born and fade away more or less quickly, depending on whether it's a "simple" or "complex" genre. This is not the case with Moonsorrow. This EP is a journey through the old and new of the band, starting from the reissues of songs already released in their debut demos ("Taistelu Pohjolasta" and "Hvergelmir"), travels through two covers ("For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Metallica and "Back To North" by Merciless"), and finally arrives in a majestic symphony of almost thirty (thirty!) minutes: "Tulimyrsky" indeed.

Never was a title more fitting for an album like this. Tulimyrsky. Storm of fire. That's exactly what you go through with the grooves and notes of this Viking colossus.
Here you find the murmuring and crashing of the northern sea waves, here there's the strength and tragedy of an epic not compromised by any commercial dilution: strength and pride. But also cold, snow, ice, and nostalgia. All given in a formula that increasingly bears the signature of this band that, as far as the "Viking" genre is concerned, is reinventing and resetting all the rules; proving that it's not only by yielding to melody for quick consumption that you can compose great albums.
Here the darkest, most extremist, and primordial Black Metal is dressed in a particular stylistic elegance, which transcends the cultural anthropological roots of the Scandinavian countries, yet is at the same time a clearly recognizable derivative, endowing the compositions, long and verbose, with a feeling that's hard to replicate and explain. Only by listening to Moonsorrow's music can one understand the series of connections, conjectures, tense and tight moments, and those more tied to the folklore of the "Ancient Ways."

Tulimyrsky is a journey I said. A journey that doesn't end when the instruments exhale the last note, but continues implanting in the mind of the listener, of those who can go beyond Ville Sorvali's scratched and acidic voice, and can extract the fruit of an epic made of blood, battles that make the earth tremble, flames licking the dark sky, reddening it and making it a distant stain, which consumes on the lives of brawny warriors. All in just one song. Incredible.

Then there are the covers, and those are another chapter. Who could imagine a song like the one by Metallica reinterpreted in a Viking key, and moreover, excellently executed? Only madmen. Like Moonsorrow indeed. And then a "Back To North" that couldn't be darker and more powerful, a step, though imperceptible, below the original. Everything condenses under an avalanche of iron and torpor, first given, then ripped, then given back, and then ripped again, in a grim and cruel dance. This song is continuously fascinating and breathtaking.
Perhaps, but I don't want to be presumptuous, I am faced with the album of the year. Perhaps not. It's too soon to say. Certainly, this is not a work that lovers of the genre can or should let slip away: that would be a sin, and not even a venial one.

I close by barraging my ears with the white-arm attacks of "Taistelu Pohjolasta", which makes it clear what maturity level Moonsorrow has reached. The song has been practically rewritten completely. Of the raw primordial musings that unleashed power and winked at Black Metal, little or almost nothing remains. Nothing except the attitude. The sounds have been reworked and put through the press of keyboards and samplers that are part of today's group's arsenal, but the core of the song remains unchanged: the arrogance, the ferocity, and the epic that grow hand in hand with the passing minutes and never stop, until you feel that smell of red-hot iron settling in the nostrils, and towards the end, it overturns every notion, leaving it stunned. "Hvergelmir", instead, if it could, it would venture into even more mysterious and dark shores, without yielding an inch to the melody-epic-catchiness conjugation. Yet, even if it's not so, the triptych I speak of is immediately sensed, and it's also obvious. It seems wrapped around itself, yet it's there, strong, resolute, and present. Always. Veiled with piercing screams that brush the contours of a landscape teeming with negative sensations.

This is the end of the album. The end of the notes that succumb noisily under a hammer that generates sparks that then, condensing, create a fireball that overwhelms everything, causing, in the mind of the listener, the second part of the work to begin.
Extraordinary.