Amorphis: Drowned maid

Tribute to Amorphis. Music is taken from 'Tales from the thousand lakes' and video was edited from this awesome 1994 live bootleg which you can check out in its' original form here :

   • AMORPHIS - Grand Rapids, MI  7/29/94  

The first time I heard Amorphis was as two songs from their debut album 'Karelian isthmus' were played (surprise, surprise) in finnish metal radio show Metalliliitto back when the debut album had just been released. I think they played "warriors trial" and "the exile of the sons of uisliu" in the radio show. I definitely liked Amorphis' debut quite a lot, even if it felt bit too let's say slow and melodic, mellow for my taste back then. It was still pretty good and I started following them with their debut album (as well as "privilege of evil" EP) out. But nothing could prepare me for the impact that their sophomore album 'Tales...' made. Nothing, really. It's one of those magical moments, like the ones I had with Napalm Death's "scum" or Death's "leprosy", or Autopsy's "mental funeral" ... Bolt Thrower's "realm of chaos", Suffocation's "human waste", Malevolent Creation's "ten commandments", Morbid Angel's "altars of madness" etc you know ... or even if you need truly oldschool example Metallica's first three albums (each on the very first hearing felt magical to me) and especially "master of puppets" there. I'd definitely throw Amorphis' "tales from the thousand lakes" into that kind of league, period. No question about it. I call it magical league simply because; albums which feel like ... when you hear them for the very 1st time, you experience right away that there's something truly magical going on here. Magical is exactly the right word for it. And that feeling just grows on each listen. Years pass and you still love those albums, and they sound timeless, truly magical like the initial vibe was with first time experience.

When I first heard Amorphis' "tales" album, actually it's one of those very, very rare cases of I really can't tell where / how I heard it first. It wasn't through radio show (I was in army those days), ... in any case I didn't straight away buy the album (but I did buy it, both as original C-tape, and also later, before "elegy" came out as CD too) but I heard it somewhere ... It could had been the music video for "black winter day" and that already blew my mind or it could had been Nuclear Blast's "death is just the beginning vol 3" which I think was released in 1994 ... In theory I shouldn't had liked the album, simply because it was "even more mellow, melodical, soft sounding etc" than the debut album of Amorphis was. I remember thinking that "ohh wow, what's going on here, this sounds like Iron Maiden gone death metal in a very twisted way!?" ... it was truly jawdropping vibe. And it was followed a freakin' strong "awww I love this already!!" vibe. As I got the album later, it was instantly clear that the same vibe ran through the whole album. It felt like "this release will make that band big!" ... each damn song felt like piece of magic to me back then - and now, 30 freakin' years later as I'm writing this, I can still say the same. Listened the album through last time today - and thought how timeless release it really is. And to think that the very same fellas are nowadays (after bunch of life's twists) all playing together in the very same band (well okay, keyboardist came in later in the 1990s) - that truly feels ... magical? Yes. And that the band is still going strong. Awesome.

Enjoy!