Vehemency
Oh, how glad I am that I managed to pick this up when it was released as it seemed to sell out in a matter of days and still never appearing in any download blogs. Maailma Uppoaaaa (Finnish for ”The World Sinks” with some additional ’a’ characters, possibly to emphasize the dramatical aspect, who knows) is a 19-minute follow-up to Maailma Kohoaa (”The World Ascends”), so the music is again heavily focused on ambient and psychedelic atmosphere overall, just like its predecessor.
Maailma Uppoaaaa has just one, long track in which the actual black metal(ish) material doesn’t start until eight minutes or so, after Klemi’s cryptic and symbolic lyrics that are being proclaimed with some interesting ambient material in the background - the same flute melodies can be heard on Hiljaiset Sanat which was released on the same day as this tape.
Once the kind-of-intro is finished, Circle of Ouroborus delivers a very sweet piece of ’dreamy metal ambience’ as the band seems to often call it - and I couldn’t categorize it better. Once again Circle of Ouroborus manages to come up with unique guitar melodies (somewhere between melancholy and totally psychedelic weirdness), wailing, clean and surprisingly in-key singing this time and bombastic, reverb-filled drums as usual. After the drums disappear, Maailma Uppoaaa falls back in to the ambient territories, in a rather same way as the song started, but now also with a tremolo-fired, soothing guitar track in the background.
The result of this all is a great composition of something that hasn’t been done before, and the band has again succeeded in creating something utterly weird yet beautiful. In the high standards of which Circle of Ouroborus is known in my books, I can, however, say that Maailma Uppoaaa is not the best offering by the band, but a great addition to anyone’s collection if they are willing to hear something different - that is, if you manage to find this anywhere, let’s hope for a re-release with Maailma Kohoaa.