AMORPHIS — Tales From the Thousand Lakes (review)

AMORPHIS — Tales From the Thousand Lakes album cover

Album · 1994 · Melodic Death Metal

4/5 · 2024-03-28
UMUR

"Tales From the Thousand Lakes" is the second full-length studio album by Finnish death metal act Amorphis. The album was released through Spinefarm Records in Finland, through Relapse Records in the US, and through Nuclear Blast Records in Europe in September 1994. It´s the successor to "The Karelian Isthmus" from 1992 and there´s been one lineup change since the predecessor as keyboard player Kasper Mårtenson has been added to the ranks, making Amorphis a quintet on this release. "Tales From the Thousand Lakes" proved to be a huge commercial success for the band and the label, and it kickstarted Amorphis international career.

While "The Karelian Isthmus (1992)" certainly is a decent quality Scandinavian styled death metal album, it´s not an album which stands out much on the scene, and had Amorphis continued down that path it´s doubtful they would have been able to make such a long and successful career from playing music. Stylistically "Tales From the Thousand Lakes" may retain some of the Scandinavian old school death metal elements of its predecessor, but Amorphis add a great deal of melody, ethnic folk atmosphere (the lyrics are inspired by the great epic book of national Finnish folklore "Kalevala"), vintage keyboards (Moog, organ), and more moderne keyboards/synths, clean vocals, and traditional heavy rock/metal influenced riff and rhythms, to their sound, which ultimately makes "Tales From the Thousand Lakes" a very different sounding album to "The Karelian Isthmus (1992)", and maybe more importantly it also sounds quite different from any other contemporary release. Other contemporary artists playing similar styles like Paradise Lost, Tiamat, Sentenced, and Cemetary, only share the heaviness and the melancholic leads and gloomy atmosphere of their music with Amorphis. Other than those features they are completely different sounding artists.

The most death metal oriented feature on "Tales From the Thousand Lakes" is arguably the growling vocals by guitarist/lead vocalist Tomi Koivusaari and even in that department there have been some changes as Amorphis have enlisted Leningrad Cowboys vocalist Ville Tuomi to sing clean vocal parts on the album. The clean vocals are not a dominant feature on "Tales From the Thousand Lakes", but they make quite an impact when they appear...maybe as a result of them appearing relatively sparsely. The use of keyboards/synths is quite dominant though and one of the defining elements of the music. The opening instrumental "Thousand Lakes" showcases this immediately, but a track like "Black Winter Day" also features dominant use of synth (moog) and on closing track "Magic and Mayhem" there´s even an electronic and psychedelic tinged techno influence. It´s a pretty interesting track when those influences are combined with the dark heavy rocking doomy death metal core sound of Amorphis.

"Tales From the Thousand Lakes" features an organic, powerful, and well sounding production, which suits the material well, and upon conclusion it´s a high quality album release by Amorphis. It´s not just a step forward for Amorphis, it´s a giant leap and a significant change of their core sound, and they really did create something unique here, which their audience clearly embraced considering the fact that the album sold a large number of copies and became Amorphis international breakthrough release. A 4 - 4.5 star (85%) rating is deserved.