Review by Ben for Amorphis - Tales From the Thousand Lakes (1994)
An incredibly unique and creative album that defies the genres normal aggressive tendencies
Back in 1994 things were very different when it came to acquiring metal music. I certainly couldn't connect to the internet and download 468 albums in a day (most of which I will never even listen to) to try to find a new favourite. I couldn't get on to sites like Rate Your Music to find out what others considered to be the most worthwhile albums to acquire. The only options we had were monthly magazine reviews along with good old trial and error. I remember the day very clearly when I picked Amorphis' Tales From the Thousand Lakes out of the extremely limited metal section at my local record store, thought that the cover looked pretty cool, and decided to take a punt. A few hours later, I think my whole concept of music had been forever changed!
Tales From the Thousand Lakes is most definitely a death metal album. But then strangely, it has no real aggression whatsoever. It doesn't attempt to be evil or dark, nor does it attempt to be violent or rebellious. Most death metal music that I'd been listening to at the time (we're talking about bands such as Morbid Angel, Carcass, Deicide, Suffocation etc.) could be considered oppressive music that's more likely to kick your ass than calm you down. Amorphis' album, while still containing base elements of death metal, contained masses of pleasant melodies, copious amounts of musical creativity and a level of innocence that I'd never experience in my beloved genre of destruction. But instead of being completely put off by what I was hearing, I was entirely transfixed and just couldn't stop myself from pressing play again and again.
To this day, I'm still not sure I've heard an album that sounds quite like this one. The songs are extremely catchy, and the melodies are just exquisite. There are various vocal styles utilized (death growls, cleanly sung, female) and various sounds thrown into the mix including keyboards and even a moog. The lyrics are all based on the Finnish national pole book which is called Kalevala and can be considered cute and strange, but entirely fitting for the wonderfully unique music they accompany. I think the current Rate Your Music genre classifications for the album are spot on. Melodic Death Metal as primary with Folk Metal, Progressive Metal and Death Doom Metal all as secondary. I think you'd be hard pressed to find another album that fits into all those categories and certainly not one that sounds as natural as this one.
Tales From the Thousand Lakes is a landmark album not only for the world of metal music in general, but for my musical development in particular. I still love the album completely today and have listened to it hundreds of times without ever getting bored. Amorphis have created many good albums since this one but I don't believe they've ever created anything this good again. If you've never experienced it and you think you can handle some very melodic death metal, then do yourself a favour and pick this album up. Highlights for me are the wonderful intro Thousand Lakes, The Castaway, Black Winter Day and Drowned Maid, but every track is gold in my opinion. A definite 5-star album!