Looks like Finland's Little Rose Productions is taking up the torch
once born by the likes of Pure Metal, Intense, and Rowe Productions, as
the forerunners of quality Christian metal. Except now the bearers of the
metal flame are pale, grim-faced, and hurried as they explore chill caverns
and traverse lands where grey storms scrape the sky.
The phrase "From Kaamos to Midnight Sun" is a reference to the extreme
North's alternating months of darkness and sunlight, and basically means
"from endless night to the everlasting day." The spiritual metaphor is
obvious. The metal world has always been hostile to Christian efforts at
infiltration, and it's only worse where Little Rose makes its home--Scandinavia.
Death and black metal bands are at the extreme forefront of their efforts,
making up most of the artists on From Kaamos...To Midnight Sun,
along with some weaker thrash and neo-classical aspirers in the well-protected
center of the compilation.
Whatever your preference in Scandinavian melodic metal, it's here.
Immortal Souls open strong with a blitzkrieg of lead and rhythm playing,
contributing excellent tracks in the vein of In Flames and Dark Tranquillity.
Manifestium follows with melodic goth metal soaring on misty keyboards,
almost like Anathema's younger, impatient brother (which is still slow).
Little Rose's flagship band Deuteronomium makes an appearance with a black
metal highlight from their full-length album, "Spell of Hell," and an unreleased
death metal tune that probably should have remained in the vault, adding
nothing to their usually varied sound.
Perhaps as a teaser for the Immortal Souls/Mordecai split CD (see
review in this issue), we're only given a brief taste of Mordecai's melodic
black metal--cascading symphonic rhythms fused with contrasting gargles
and serious, multi-layered, goth vocals. Then we get a welcome break from
all the gloom and gurgle with thrash rockers Scream and the neo-classical
Hallowed. Unfortunately, Scream's singer has the curse of the bad Euro-accent
and sounds like he stumbled straight from the tavern to the studio. Their
first track eventually gets into a respectable groove with some progressive
time changes and more palatable shouting, but the second descends into
dismal off-key ballad territory. Hallowed picks up the pace with plenty
of satisfying gallop-picking, soft keyboards, and nasal upper mid-range
vocals. It's a refreshing trip into yesteryear, but below average
in comparison to others of the genre. Cruciferae, the resident veterans,
round out the album with their solidly-executed, atmospheric, melodic black/death
metal with a variety of vocal styles and switch-offs between acoustic and
distortion passages.
Cheers are in order for Little Rose Productions's efforts with this
one; it's quite a groundbreaking compilation when measured against Christian
metal's track record, even if it's all been done before by many non-Christian
bands. Equal to or better than Rowe's Northern Lights compilation
several years back. I'm already looking forward to the next one.
By Josh Spencer (2/15/99)
