Barren Earth

Ok, so when a band has the guitarist from Kreator and the vocalist from Swallow the Sun, not to mention a few former Amorphis members, it gets my attention right away. Going off a recommendation from DGR of TNOTB, I decided to check these guys out. For those of you who haven’t heard of them, which included me until earlier this evening, they’re a melo-death supergroup from Finland that came together in 2007.

I love when supergroups come together because often it seems the musicians have a ton of ideas that might not work with the band they’re in, and the new project serves as an outlet for new and creative ideas to flourish. I don’t think Barren Earth is an exception to that pattern. The debut full-length, “Curse of the Red River”, is an extremely interesting album that’s bursting with many different influences from the death, doom and prog genres. Before I weigh in on my thoughts, I was reading an interview with keyboardist/ex-Amorphis member Kasper Mårtenson, and wanted to share a bit of it here. I found this part particularly interesting and telling on the subject of reviewing music. Perhaps the majority of us don’t know what we’re talking about after all, and it’s not just me! A side note; some sites are referring to Barren Earth as melo-doom, not melo-death, and I’m not cocky enough to pretend to know which is accurate. I decided to go with melodic death as the keyboardist seemed to accept this description in the interview below, and that works for me.

HB:You all have other projects, current and/or previous. How much did this work with other (metal) bands shape what Barren Earth is or has become?

Kasper: It is difficult to assess this objectively. We do music we feel like doing. Judging by the reviews, quite a few see a connection with Amorphis. But a lot these views are inconsistent. Some people think we sound a bit like old Amorphis, some people say it’s a bit like the new Amorphis, and some people say it sounds like the type of music Amorphis should’ve started playing in the late 90s! Go figure. I’m too close to it to be able to analyze. Olli-Pekka has a very distinctive way of writing melodies. Since he has written more songs than the rest of us on the album (four out of nine), and since he was one of the main writers on Tales From The Thousand Lakes and Elegy[both Amorphis albums, 1994 and 1996], it is obvious that some similarities are apparent. Many people have said also that “Forlorn Waves,” which is a song written by me, sounds like Amorphis. Then again, many people have said that they immediately knew that it was a song written by me…

Full Interview here: http://www.hellbound.ca/2010/04/barren-earth-interview/

Hearing that reviewers often see things much differently than other was a great relief and took a lot of pressure off me to talk about this pretty high-profile band (Thanks, Kasper!). Speaking of keyboards, I found the keyboards on this album really complimentary to everything else, and even more than that, they’re a piece of the puzzle that would leave the album lacking if removed. Usually I feel like a keyboard could be replaced with a guitar part without me missing it, but in this instance it really works for me.

The album goes through a lot of different mood changes from song to song. I appreciate that as it kept me interested the entire run through. It’s obvious and expected that everyone in this band has a ton of talent both in songwriting and in performing. The standout song for me was “The Ritual of Dawn”, which is quite epic and combines some really heavy riffs with a pretty nice, calm classical part in the middle. I’ve actually listened to it about 5 times tonight, it’s pretty catchy. “Curse of the Red River”, the title track, is awesome too. While other reviews I’ve read are loaded with comparisons, I’m honestly not the biggest expert in melodic death metal to be able to feel comfortable making assertations about that yet.

It’s pretty much a no-brainer that if you like the bands these guys come out of, you’re gonna like Barren Earth, but it seems like this might be an easy album for people who aren’t yet die-hard metal fans to get into as well. Lots of fun to listen to melodic bits, and the frequent rest periods from heavy to calm are a bonus for the uninitiated too. I remember being quite young and just getting my metal legs, I could barely enjoy screamy stuff. These day I prefer screamy to clean vocals every time. I can see people new to metal starting on this album and then branching out to each band members’ respected other works to explore further and understand the influences.

Barren Earth @ Metal Archives
Barren Earth @ Myspace