Founded in 1990 in Helsinki, Amophis worked their way up to the top of the European metal scene in the last 10 years. However the term metal doesn't necessarily get to the point anymore. Sure, originally the disciples around mastermind Esa Holopainen were definitely Death Metal, but gradually developed into a serious rock act.
The big break through was in 1994 with their last really extreme album Tales Of The Thousand Lakes. Starting that very second, the whole metal community went insane. After intensive touring for this masterpiece (including Nuclear Blast festivals), they decided to discover new musical spheres. Pasi Koskinen was a new singer for the band to work additionally with clean vocals. Guitarist and former singer Tomi Koivusari, got the chance to focus more on his guitarwork, which happened to be a noticeable and positive change especially at all live shows. This constellation recorded in 1996 the Elegy album. This album became history. Not only that it became a pschychadelic progressive/ folk metal masterpiece, it also became the first top 100 chart album within history for Nuclear Blast. The speciality about Elegy wasn't only its magic, which (yet) radiates form it, but also the fact that none of their death metal fans have turned their backs towards the band. Everybody loved the album and a lot of new fans were gained. Encouraged by this success they decided to perfectionate this direction and therefor it took 3 years until the follow up album Tuonela was ready to go. Another change this time was that Tomi, totally withdrew from vocals and the few sinister parts were also completed by Pasi. Tuonela combines with absolute uniqueness modern rock music and archaic but sympathic finish character and a bit of of psychadelic rock music of the 70ies. This album became the most successful within the history of Amorphis and entered the top 50ies of the German albumcharts.
The following headliner tour was a complete triumph. Since the following USA tour with lablelmates The Kovenant became a major success as well, they decided to take a small break and work on the songs for the next album. Another reason for the break was the separation from bass player Olli-Pekka Laine, who left the band because of personal reasons. The others were shocked, since Amorphis was never a group because of opportunism, but true friends who made music together. Anyway, they had to continue and with ex-Kyria bassist Niclas Etelävouri they found a suitable substitute. Since ex-keyboarder Santeri Kallio was a bandmember and they've known each other for quite some time, they immediately knew, that this constellation would work.
In early spring of 2000 they entered (repeated once again), the Finnvox Studio in Helsinki and together with producer Simon Efemy they started to put together the new album. Result was Am Universum, a record which cannot be topped by beauty, intensity, relaxation and class. They continued the concept of megaseller Tuonela without any compromise. Obviously Amorphis wouldn't be Amorphis if they couldn't present any renevals this time. For one, you can hear for the first time more synthysounds, and to hear a saxophone solo on a rock album is rather unusual as well. For Amorphis Am Universe presents another step towards growing up and all that with typical Finnish easiness and perfection.
EspeciallyAlone , originally planned as a video , which is a dark mixture of modern alternative rock and their typical trademarks like psychedelic guitars and finnish folk sequences, is a proof for . Lyric wise the world philosophy of our singer Pasi is explained, reports highly excited Esa. I would say that Am Universum is our saddest and musically most melancholic album until now. In spite of all that, it isn't depressive and contains a lot of beautiful elements.
Am Universum is going to fascinate friends of previous albums of intelligent rockmusic as well as fans of typical 70 ies psychedalic sounds!
Source: Label Officiel: http://www.nuclearblast.de
