Amorphis : " Halo"

 14 albums in you should know what to expect from these guys. They have been at it since 1990, though their current singer joined in 2005, so you have had 17 years to get used to him. The openers are effective melodic death metal for the Progpower crowd. The thing that impresses me on first listen is the hookiest and heaviness of the riffs Sure they are from Finland, but the melodic nature of what they do owes more to Sweden, there are bright melodies, this is not darker music, but then again Nightwish is from Finland. They get proggier on "the Moon" but keep it interesting. Dream Theater could learn from these guys how not to get too wanky.  The synths take a bigger role, and they develop a Tool like tension. 

"Windmane" is pretty solid, perhaps not as inspired as the first three songs as it feels a little more like color by number Amorphis. The same can be said for the more upbeat "A New Land". There are a few flourishes of more exotic scales outside the normal pentatonics . "Seven Roads Come Together" is more middle of the road prog metal, works for what it is but fails to impress like how the album started. "War" has more death metal vocals, but overall has a brighter more soaring power metal feel to it which once again puts this album in a less metal more almost hard rock place on the sonic spectrum. I am fine with it not being a heavy as long as the song writing is either dark or interesting in some way. But the title track could be one of many bands from Europ who do this sort of symphonic prog metal that really sounds more like an anime opening theme than actual metal. 

There is more of a metal gallop to "the Wolf" but the vocal approach to the choruses of this album seem to be following a formula. Two minutes when the song breaks down for the guitar solo, they do weave in some more dynamic sounds that work better here than on previous songs that followed a similar formula. They end the album with a power ballad duet with a female vocalist, which lumps them in with all the other Nightwish wanna bees, a shame as Amorphis is such an established band whose own identity should not pressure them to make this kind of Disney Princess bullshit.  I will give this album an 8 as it starts strong and some of the song that do not get into the symphonic sunshine fluff are pretty solid, nowhere near their best work it comes out February 11th