The —en suffix modifies the word into the genitive case. As you can see, Finnish grammatical rules allow for incredibly long words to be formed. If any of the information is incorrect, feel free to correct me.
This is what I concluded from the research I did. The first thing I noticed on this album is pronounced Bal-Sagoth influence. The keyboards are very similar to those used on Battle Magic.
The tempo is quite slowed down and made much more epic. The production is also leaps and bounds better than Bal-Sagoth. The double bass hits are clear as a bell as are the cymbal crashes. In fact, this album has their best drum sound to date. The acoustic feel gives you the impression that Moonsorrow sat around a bonfire singing this hymnal praise to the gods. The use of the accordion on this song is perfect.
Instead, there are many more violin parts, which fill the void. The flute is featured quite prominently on several songs as well. One aspect of this music that I appreciate is the attention to the folk instruments that have been basically forgotten in modern music.
Not to say that every song should have accordion solos but when appropriate and properly executed, it can be an incredible lift to the right song. It is also clear from listening to this album that much more time was put into the composition. The songs flow in a much more unified manner. Each part is crafted to relate to the other parts in a seamless manner.
The epic choirs mesh with the instrumentation quite well. There are no replies yet to this review Be the first one to post a reply! Moonsorrow - Kivenkantaja. You really can't flatter Kivenkantaja enough. The way how the songs are build is brilliant and they fit into whole solidly as well as work greatly on their own. It's over 13 minutes long and introduces most of the sides of this epic band from ingenious guitar work to subtle synthesizer brilliance. No one can't avoid it's poignant touch.
I can't fully describe why but part of the charm is the mythologic feel this song radiates. It's something wild and powerful yet still pure sensitivity. It begins with a melodic tune and takes many folk instruments along before proceeding into heroic passage of pure epic pagan metal. Matkan lopussa means At the Journey's End and the ingenuity of the band members, especially Sorvali cousins, culminates in this wistful song. I have decided that this song will be my funeral song and that promise will keep.
Serene music, wonderful lyrics and the stunning voice of the quest female vocalist make that possible. On this album, these talented fellow countrymen of mine have constructed an astonishing atmospehere which radiates the ancient heathen nature of Finns. Even the cover art is executed in order to prepare the listener in the right mood for the album. I doubt there is any other band like Moonsorrow.
Some may remind me of them but no one will ever achieve the same feeling that Moonsorrow has on their best releases. Every fan of epic folk metal should listen to this or there will forever be an empty hole in their heart. What highlights? The whole album is a fucking highlight of the history of metal! I'm normally against rating any album a perfect , but I've been studying Moonsorrow's music for a while now, dedicating myself to learning what they're all about.
From all I've learned, I stand confidently behind my rating for "Kivenkantaja", Moonsorrow's third full-length release.
The title "Kivenkantaja" means "Stonebearer" in Finnish. The cover elegantly portrays a stone embedded in the ground in a snow-capped field. The runic depictions on the stone bear the group's name and the album's title along with an ancient representation of Finnish folklore.
Six songs to this recording cover almost fifty-six minutes of music, which averages out to nine minutes per song, plus change.
Five chief musicians, led by the cousins Sorvali, Henri and Ville, cover a wide variety of instruments: the standard guitar, bass and drums for any metal band, along with the traditional Moonsorrow mouth harp, six- and twelve-string acoustic guitars, synthesizers here referred to as "arpeggiators" , harmonium which is like an organ that uses reeds , accordion and additional percussion, which is liberally applied throughout the album.
Ville Sorvali's "death" vocals definitely take some getting used to, even among avid death and black metal listeners. For the opening to this album, however, the first verse is handled by cousin Henri Sorvali, and he sings in a clean vocal style. His voice is very steady and confident, and I would say, perfect for this album. His voice fits somewhere in the high registers of the baritone range, which are, again, perfect for making powerful metal.
Anything higher would sound like European power metal, and anything lower would seem like a dirge. The first song is the thirteen-minute "Raunioilla". The introduction resembles that of an ancient Roman church choir chant in unison in Latin. The metal theme begins with a very epic keyboard background chord melody, and a sweet synthesizer melody in the foreground.
The overall sound captures a swelling effect, enhancing the epic feel to it. The vocals don't come in until after the three-minute mark, cleverly introducing Henri's clean vocals first, then homogenously mixing in Ville's "death" vocals mid-verse.
All members of the band, plus two guests, lend their voices for a clean choir in this song. The tune simply does not relent in its epic stature, incorporating perhaps the best possible style of guitar soloing. It is not filled with too much that would uniquely identify it as having a certain flavor, for example, guitar solos in American metal songs can tend to be very flashy and "bravado".
It stays within certain metric and melodic parameters enough to make it an enhancement to the song without diminishing the epic sound. The clean-vocal choir gives a lot of strength to the pice overall. At about the ten-minute mark, the gears switch to a somber and reflective pace, which is when you can begin to hear the harmonium. This theme builds until the end of the piece.
All in all, it has an immense epic feel and lots of ethnic Nordic flavor. The "ancient Latin chanting" transitions into the second song, "Unohduksen Lapsi", which kicks your face in right from the start with a very heavy downtuned guitar riff. This song, a bit shorter than the former, does not waste any time in building into themes. The transitions are sharp and mighty, and the delivery is strongly epic. Here you can hear some nice synthesizer work, reminiscent of the mellotron from the 70's, coloring up the artistic recipe halfway through.
Excellently mixed, you can hear the drummer's double-bass pounding in perfect synchronicity with the rhythm guitar riffing. One key element to the epic quality of this song is the keyboard's "brass" sound. Much of the keyboard fills emulate horns, commonly thought of as mighty and aggressive instruments. The playing of the synth tune using mordents really enhance the ethnic flavor, while once again incorporating a lot of charging brass and using the vocal choir make this song an incredible piece of metallic art.
Another fascinating thing about this song is right in the ending. The entire theme is played out by all instruments and fades to silence, but before arriving there, the same theme played by the duo of fiddle and harmonium fade in perfectly in time.
The title track comes next. This song is filled with all kinds of fascinating elements. Five beats to the measure, with the eighth-note getting the beat. In this riff, the main accent occurs on the fourth beat in the measure. It is a riff such as this which can really exhibit the intimidating level of skill that the musicians possess.
Again, the keyboard themes showcase the brass attack. The song also is loaded with lots of ethnic flavor, showing what Moonsorrow is all about. The real beauty of this album comes from the two remaining tracks. The piece is instrumental for the first movement, then transitions to the vocal movement via a bass voice, most likely pitch-modulated, which sounds like more of a tone of lecturing than that of chanting.
This song paints so much more of an aural landscape than most songs in metal. The keyboards are to thank for the most part, by using aural bass drones, chime effects, sustained whistle effects and epic chord chorusing.
This tune transitions into the last song by way of those same bass drones, wind effects, sustained synth pads and the now infamous mouth harp. The last song is a complete break from metal, consisting only of the choir and a featured female soprano vocalist, along with the keyboard chord chorusing and accordion. The melody in "Matkan Lopussa" comes from a traditional Finnish folk song.
Never does a non-metal song sound so good coming from a metal band than what we listen to here! The song is very faithful to the rhythm and meter of the folk melody, which is more of a presumption on my part because I've never heard it. The song is very strict in terms of how it's played out, and it gives you such an epic-style swelling of pride when you listen to it. It really almost gives you the feeling of wanting to be in that choir singing with them. This album is impeccably produced and mixed and really showcases the true artistic talent of these players.
The fact that Ville Sorvali plays fretless bass is evidence enough of this. Musicians know that the fretless bass can only be played by those with more skill than that of any common bassist. It is an instrument for uncommon men, just like the violin. Musicians also know that the twelve-string acoustic guitar has to be handled with precision.
Such full sound cannot be wielded by a mediocre player. Another important note is the fact that this is the only Moonsorrow album to date that does not incorporate any blastbeats into any of the songs. All the songs are mid-paced, not coming off in the least bit thrashy. So, combined with the talent, the artistic vision, the production and mixing, and the instrumentation, I'm giving this album a perfect score.
It is a compulsory item in any black metal collection as well as that of the pagan metal. Even though Voimasta Ja Kunniasta is my favorite Moonsorrow album, Kivenkantaja was the one that got me to this band, and also their most accessible record.
It's not so heavy, and has less to none black metal passages. But the classic formula it's still there. Epic choirs, long songs, riffs that could last forever, and, of course, the keyboards. And now, instead of ending with the epic track, they start with the longest track of the album. Rauniolla it's one of their best songs, and one of their few songs that have a solo as we know it. It also has very few growls. It perfectly flows then into Unohduksen Lapsi, which is the heaviest song, and also the catchiest.
The main riff it's probably their best. So you could treat these 3 songs as one. This last also has a music video, which is shorter, and probably more appealing to those who still don't know the band. The Title track is, to me, the weirdest Moonsorrow track. Usually, when they were going heavy, they were heavy.
And when they were going epic, they were epic. But on that track, sometimes you think the keyboard it's gonna do something amazing, but it stops and the harsh vocals stop. It's also one of the Moonsorrow tracks that looks shorter to me, which means it's better than it looks. But then the last two tracks, which aren't so memorable, yet still awesome. It's also almost an instrumental, having very few lyrics.
Then, an outro, which is, I guess, a typical finnish song. To me, those last tracks flow as one, since both are very soft and beautiful, making an awesome album even better. What surprises me the most, it's that even with 5 songs and an outro, the album clocks at almost one hour, but the album looks very short.
That's the magic of Moonsorrow, making minutes like if they were much shorter. If this happens to you with another band, you'll see what the 'Moonsorrow syndrome' means: Perfection. This as a whole is Moonsorrow's third but weakest album. It definately has its moments during the first three tracks which are some of the best Viking metal tracks ever recorded, but after the album just begins to fade and it loses my attention.
Rauniolla is a very long epic song that clocks in at and starts off with the sounds of bells in the distance before a creaky door closes and the drums and guitars explode. This on a whole is not an extremely heavy song, and is a melodic one. The atmosphere is rather sad, and it contains mostly clean singing and chanting and very little growling from Ville.
This also has the fiddle, which is used on many Moonsorrow tracks. Unohduksen Lapsi continues to have the bell off in the distance for a while with some excellent riffs before the song explodes again. Ville starts growling at seconds. Overall this song is very enjoyable although it begins to fade on you just a little bit as it goes on. It isn't as agressive anymore, and has a lot of those fiddles in it with a weird little noise that sounds like a spring.
This also contains more clean vocals than growls. Jumalten Kaupunki incl. Tuhatv is the best track on this album by far. It starts off with a very melodic melody, and some fiddles and keyboards as well as chanting before it explodes into one of Moonsorrow's best songs.
The drums and guitars on here are flawless and combine with a few other effects such as keyboards and maybe even a little bit of fiddle to provide you with a very nice, more cheerful melody than what is more common with Moonsorrow. I usually picture the music as taking place in the cold and dark woods of Finland. Anyway we are greeted with a rather high-pitched excellent and long scream by Ville at It isn't one of the harsh and painful sounding ones, but is great nonetheless.
At Ville begins growling and his vocals are as usual, the growl is pretty low pitched and they are actually a bit more clear on here. Kivenkantaja starts off with a peaceful acoustic guitar, however it ends up being one of Moonsorrow's heaviest songs. At around 1 minute it explodes with heavy guitars, loud drumming, and a fiddle. Ville's vocals here are a more hoarse growl than is usual.
The song is a bit boring and feels awkward as a whole. Tuulen Tytar starts off with nice keyboards and has a rather joyful melody. It is a mostly instrumental song and has a boring tick to it through a large portion of the song which makes it slightly annoying. Overall this is one of the more boring songs on the album and has more folk influences than most Moonsorrow material.
Matkan Lopussa starts off sounding like Aika from Suden Uni and remains mostly a quiet ambient song. A woman sings and from the sound of her voice she must be pretty beautiful. We also have a chorus singing on here. The whole song is rather boring, however still not as big of a waste of time as was Kaiku on Verisakeet, Moonsorrow's newest work.
Overall this is still a very good album and the fact that it sounds a little different shows that Moonsorrow evolves, and while it contains some influences from both Voimasta ja Kunniasta and Suden Uni, it sounds more evolved. This is one of the reasons I have such great respect for Moonsorrow. You never should expect another similar album from them as even though they contain similar influences they will end up being different from one another, and unlike music from some other bands you could listen to this over and over and still not get bored of the music.
You will be able to hear quality music even if you are listening to it for the hundredth time. Let me start off by saying I have hundreds of albums of miscellaneous metal artists ranging anywhere from black metal, to death metal, to doom metal, to ambient.
Another thing that stands out to me are the outstanding vocals, binding that of Vintersorg and Finntroll. Track 1: Raunioilla - This is the first track on the album. After the song hits ten minutes and twenty-one seconds about the song turns ambient for the remaining three minutes, and ends with a chiming of a bell, where the second song begins.
This song is just over eight minutes long, and reminds me of almost a mix between filosofem at some points and Finntroll. Although this song is five minutes shorter than the prior track, it has more of an epic feel.
The song ends with soft strumming on what seems to be a fiddle, and sounds of Celtic origin. Track 3: Jumalten Kaupunki Incl. The first two minutes are mostly instrumental, with a little traditional folk singing, then at the mark; the ghastly scream is heard, followed by catchy folk instrumentals. At , the vocals begin, and are growled similar to that of Finntroll. This track displays the excellent vocals of Moonsorrow. At around the minute mark, the vocals cease, and the remaining few minutes are instrumental, and although the vocals stand out to me, this instrumental piece jumps out and makes me want to battle some kind of goblin.
Track 4: Kivenkantaja - The song starts off acoustic, real peaceful and soothing, yet dark too. When I hear this song, I imagine myself hearing it in a poor village on the outskirts of a dark castle in the medieval times.
The acoustic stops after a minute, and some of the most bestial vocals on the album begin that send chills up your spine, a feeling I love when listening to music. At two minutes and forty-two seconds, the aggressiveness stops, and a small soothing folk piece ensues for about a minute or so. Afterwards the amazing vocals pick back up, musical orgasms ensue. Soturin Tie - The song starts off with a minute of peaceful ambience, then followed by some good ole Celtic folk music which continues for a good two minutes.
After those two minutes, the same theme is being played; only drums are added along with guitar playing. At five minutes, what seems to be an accordion is played, and classic folk singing takes place for about a minute or so. This happens for the remaining of the song, and the eight and a half minute song fades out slowly. Track 6: Matkan Lopussa - This is the final track of the album, and the shortest.
The song as a whole is ambient, containing some choir-sung vocals by both males and females. Very very soothing, and a great way to end a great CD. Moonsorrow's new album Kivenkantaja literally blew me away. While I have always enjoyed their sound, Kivenkantaja, is by far my favorite of their releases.
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