Two years after the successful Silent Waters CD, AMORPHIS strike back with their new album, entitled Skyforger. This is the ninth album for the Finnish atmospheric Metal band and the third one with the same personnel since Eclipse.
The recordings and production of the album were made at Sonic Pump Studios in Helsinki. The production is clear and powerful but created in such a way to sound raw. The ten tracks (eleven in the digipack version) the album consists of, unfortunately, vary in quality. You can find songs that can be described as quite catchy but also songs that pass a little bit unnoticed.
It needs more than a few auditions to have a clear opinion about the album, that's for sure. The first impression is a combination of beautiful, melodic riffs, folk elements, strong, deep and in times throat vocal lines along with composing ideas that make the album flow. But you if you listen to it more carefully you will start to think that not everything works well here.
Joutsen's voice can be sweet, emotional and also brutal, but the problem is that all the above happen in a limited range. This result is that the choruses sound a bit repetitive. Actually this tends to be the biggest problem of this release. Another factor contributing to this is the guitar riffs that sound quite similar, causing the audition of the album to become tiring after some time by not giving the listener the will to swallow it over and over again.
Another aspect which does not help at all is the prog Rock form the band uses once again, trying to apply it in a simple way, and that is the point where things get 'messy'. However, the balance between slow and heavy/fast parts prevents this from overwhelming the album.
The lyrics are inspired by Kalevala as always, concerning Seppo Ilmarinen, an old Finnish god and heroic blacksmith that crafted the stars on the sky dome and a magical artifact called Sampo.
In conclusion, Skyforger is the album that an AMORPHIS fan will surely like no matter what, but I would not suggest it to people that would like to get into AMORPHIS' music for the first time.