Sanojesi Aarelle

Horna | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 25, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Moribund Records
• ASIN: B001H1OV2E
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #289,710 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars pretty good.., March 28, 2010

By 

BI "Izgec" (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sanojesi Aarelle (Audio CD)

you can just buy it for the second CD...

repetitive, melodic, dense with a dirty sound...

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Safe to the point of predictability., May 28, 2009

By 

avgvstvs "Matt Seil" (Omaha NE) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sanojesi Aarelle (Audio CD)

Review in short: Blastbeats, cold guitars, shrill vocalization, classic BM--pushes no boundaries.

I was recommended this band by a buddy who's been a Black Metal fan for some time, and being a sucker for 2cd albums... I bought in as soon as it became available from Moribund Records. Being a fan of bands like Emperor and Enslaved I was hoping to be regaled with some atmospheric and eloquent BM!

I don't quite know where to begin!

The album opens with the speedy Munaistoen Alttarilta. However, this song fails for me on several levels... Most notably its utter simplicity. I think I count perhaps 4 riffs, any one of them I could actually pick up and play myself... and I'm not a good guitarist. Good enough to know what I can and can't do, and I can play this one... and what good is metal if you can't listen to it and say "holy f* how did he DO that?"

The second song, "Verilehto" picks up a slow groove and does pick things up a bit more, but many opportunities to expand the musical horizons are squandered with simplistic riffing and consistent returns to ending notes on tritones...

Which is not what I'd had in mind. Don't get me wrong--I expect lots of tritones from any BM band... but these guys come close to ripping open a cliche here.

But on track 3... "Mustan Kirkkauden Sarastus," I was hooked. There is more than 4 riffs to the whole song, and the vocalist breaks out of the constant monotone screaming from the first two tracks to play around with death metal and other more expressive forms of vocalizing.

In general, the rest of disc 1 picks up from there, but plays it completely safe within the black metal genre. If you like traditional BM you can't go wrong here, but I'm not traditional. I like craziness and completely new juxtapositions of sound. You won't find that here. In general you can predict exactly where they'll go in a given song: INTRO = 4 bars

VERSE = 16 bars

CHORUS = 8 bars

VERSE = 16 bars

CHORUS = 8 bars

INSTRUMENTAL BREAK = 8 bars

MIDDLE EIGHT = 8 bar... For a genre priding itself on eschewing mainstream music, Horna manages to perfectly rip off the typical song structure of a pop song to a fault, with few exceptions.

Production-wise, it's pretty typical BM fare, for the most part, sounds like they're playing in your living room. Vocals are mixed particularly clear, however, which would be a bonus if I spoke Finnish. Not a slam on the band, but maybe that's why I felt they lacked for me--without knowing the thesis of each song it's rather difficult to give a fair representation. All I can go on is what I'm presented with.

Disc 2:

The second disc is quite a bit more melodic than the first, but again--they never change the riffs up. It's like they decided to take some of their fast songs and slow them down, recorded them onto disc 2 and called it done. Notable exception: Ruumisalttari. Melodic and powerful through and through. Their strong use of classical melody earns alot of brownie points on this disc, though none of it is particularly original.

Conclusion: I know where Black Dahlia Murder gets their vocal ideas from. I know these guys have been around for an ungodly long time (since '93) but you'd think they would learn a few more tricks in that period of time. At no time do they push the envelope, and for some guys (like my buddy who recommended them) that's exactly what they want in music. They want everything like it was in '93 when Euronymous was alive and Burzum still walked the streets. And there's nothing wrong with that. But my mind usually only likes something for a short while, and this style of BM doesn't fit me anymore. (For the record, I like Sigh, Leviathan, Nachtmystium, Abazogorath, Melechesh.)

Disc 1: 2 stars.

Disc 2: 3 stars.