Amorphis – The Karelian Isthmus (1992)

It probably shouldn’t be surprising how quickly Amorphis departed from the death/doom metal that fills The Karelian Isthmus, given how many bands similarly morphed into more standard rock combos… but it is! Amorphis had an ear for the epic and melodramatic here that as far as I know was thrown out after their first few albums. The question of why so many bands followed similar career arcs (make a “progressive” death metal album, then make something else) is outside the scope of this review format. Still, we’re left with a melodic and surprisingly elaborate take on death/doom from a band that even a year ago was far filthier and less refined, and that’s where we start.

To be fair, by the time Amorphis properly got into the studio album game, they’d not only established their own skillset by recording some earlier death metal (demos, and the Privilege of Evil EP, even though that wasn’t released until some time later), but also had a corpus of established Scandinavian comrades to pattern themselves off. As a result, I’m not surprised by how polished The Karelian Isthmus sounds. Its deep yet clear guitars and deep growls courtesy of Tomi Koivusaari particularly stand out. The occasional use of keyboard patches for texture are also noteworthy, as they add depth and dynamics to these songs without distracting from the overall approach. To be fair, later incarnations of Amorphis would dramatically expand on the keys.

The compositions here are certainly ambitious, at least going by the number and variety of sections the average song goes through. Overall, they’re similar to the earlier, bludgeoning yet atmospheric sort of death metal of the earliest ’90s, though Amorphis does seem to favor magic over mayhem in their aesthetic. One thing I particularly like about The Karelian Isthmus is how it successfully avoids the standard pop verse/chorus material in favor of greater structural variety. A lot of bands that try to expand beyond this still end up clinging to these basic song structures (I’m looking at you, Death). The caveat here is that while Amorphis has written many an individual riff and many types of riffs to build their songs, this is another album where the transitions between them end up awkward at best. There’s occasionally something to be said for these abrupt transitions, but I’m not certain it’s particularly appropriate for this type of music. It’s actually a pretty serious issue that the band wouldn’t really learn to work around until Elegy some years later. What I’ve found in my personal experience, however, is that the other aspects of the songwriting (variety in general and the strength of individual sections) helps make up for it. Some isthmuses aren’t nearly as fortunate!

With all of that in mind, it seems reasonable of me to assume that I personally like Amorphis’s debut more than what my analysis of it would lead me to believe. Still, it particularly excels at creating its huge, mythic atmosphere. Regardless of what you think of the underlying compositions, this is a superlative worth studying.

Highlights: “Grail’s Mysteries”, “Exile of the Sons of Uisliu”, “The Lost Name of God”