INSOMNIUM – Across The Dark

Insomnium, the sleeping disorder of an insomniac, is when Finnish Metal meets Swedish Metal. It’s when the doomy and freezing Melodic Death Metal of snowy Finland congregates with the warm Melodic tempest of the modern / Gothenburg Death Metal of the Swedish land.

Upon close observation, Insomnium is reminiscent of two bands, one Finnish, one Swedish – the late era of Amorphis and Dark Tranquility. The former’s spirit and weight is much more recognizable when listening to Insomnium’s harmony.
Since their formation in 1997, the group have come under an amazing progression with their music and their true identity as a Melodic Death Metal band with great releases as their 2002 debut, In the Halls of Awaiting and their 2004 second release, Since the Day It All Came Down. These two albums are hand’s down milestones in Insomnium’s promising career.

With their new Across The Dark, you are expected to be amazed that these guys, in the future, will have a hard time losing their touch on creating astounding harmonies of sheer ecstasy yet with the aching bites of malevolence and gloominess.

Across The Dark’s atmosphere is as dark as the band’s previous albums, it maintains the engagement of two different styles of melodies which were made by the two different scenes made in Finland and Sweden. As mentioned earlier, Amorphis and Dark Tranquility are screaming out from Insomnium’s material and without a doubt this is an exquisite experience to take part in.

On this particular album, as opposed to prior years, the group blooms with small dosages of progression attempts with a potential plan on developing something dissimilar.

Across The Dark, is maybe an effort on behalf of Insomnium on turning their music towards a different turn done with a rather more modern course then earlier years. With this accomplishment, besides the modern feel, their music sounds more interesting than before.

Even if the songs lack solos, which could have been amazing with tunes such as these, the main lead role was given to the keyboards, which is the basis of the band’s harmonies rather than the two guitars participating (even with the inspiring moments of the acoustics). The number of bands that choose to let their keyboards do the talking instead of the guitars is rising; nevertheless, not all of them write and perform with Insomnium’s skill. In fact, the keyboards were handled by the talented key man, Alexi Munter, of the band Swallow The Sun, which their style is somewhat closer to the Finnish side of Insomnium.

With the services of Munter, Insomnium added a small surprise… Jules Naveri from the bands Enemy Of The Sun and Profane Omen who took on the clean vocals role. His addition in a couple of songs in Across The Dark has created a stronger vocal line when it was featured. The important role of the keys and Naveri’s excellent vocal skills are indicators of the progression made by Insomnium in order to enhance their music. As far as it went – it paid off.

In the midst of all that is good there are a few overall problems such as the production. As in all of the band’s albums, the production is well-done but here someone forgot to give the vocals more credit in volume, a factor which made the album rather instrumental like, and somebody didn’t notice that the drum set is a bit weak in various spots.

These problems, alongside the Gamma Ray rip off in the “Weighed Down With Sorrow” song (a doomy version of the blazing riff of “Strangers In The Night”), Insomnium offers some great tracks such as the opening Instrumental “Equivalence”, “Down With The Sun”, the semi-depressive chill of “Where The Last Wave Broke”, the defiance of “Against The Stream”, “The Lay Of Autumn” and the mesmerizing “Into The Woods”.

Take a step through coldness and warmth altogether and just let your spirit flow through the tunes and the music will do the rest.