Band:	Insomnium
Album:	Across The Dark
Style:	Melodic death metal
Release date:	September 09, 2009
A review by:	Thryce

Disc I [CD]
01. Equivalence
02. Down With The Sun
03. Where The Last Wave Broke
04. The Harrowing Years
05. Against The Stream
06. Lay Of The Autumn
07. Into The Woods
08. Weighed Down With Sorrow
09. The New Beginning [special edition bonus]
10. Into The Evernight [special edition bonus]

Disc II [DVD]
+ Making Of "Across The Dark"
+ Mortal Share [video]
+ Making Of "Mortal Share"
+ Elder [video]
+ Photogallery

Melodic Death metal
Recorded: Fantom Studio, Finland 2009
Label: Candlelight Records
Total Running Time: 45:41


What if The Big Guy Himself told you that you already lived the happiest day of your entire life? Would you fall into despair, curl up into a pathetic ball of misery, waiting to get shot out of disgust? Or would that give you the power to pursue the second happiest day of your life no matter what? Powerful despair or despairing power. Sounds a lot like Insomnium's Across The Dark, the light leading to darkness.

Expectations for the new Insomnium album were running pretty high. Let me kill all the suspense right away. Following naturally from the line of Above The Weeping World, this album is nothing short of astonishing. Easily accessible with a tendency to recycle old material, nevertheless astonishing. From start to finish Insomnium's fourth opus is a somewhat sorrowful though meaningful album. An album you can listen to twice in a row but still will sound kind of different. An album that may be able to move you every time you hear it. More or less touching, like a surrounding veil of cold dusk in a beautiful yet forgotten winter landscape.

The unchanged fundament of the Insomnium sound is still melodic death metal with subtle fringes of a certain doom metal feel. Sorrow with balls, so to say. Melodious much as intense and aggressive guitar tunes are mixed with a - may I say almost typically Finnish - compellingly somber and doomesque texture, very much in the vein of bands like Swallow The Sun, Rapture, Saattue, even Before The Dawn and Slumber. Okay, the last one is Swedish, but the point I'm trying to make remains valid. This is an album packed with melancholy driven and sweeping guitar lines. The combination is just addictive. Almost classy.

Across The Dark also marks the first Insomnium album ever that involves limited(!) clean vocals. Delivered by Jules Näveri (from Profane Omen, Enemy Of The Sun and ex-Misery Inc.), the more emotive - close to whiny - clean vocals get nonetheless overshadowed by the harsh, foreboding growls of Niilo Sevänen. While we're throwing names, another remarkable guest role on the album is assigned to Swallow The Sun's Aleksi Munter, who took care of all the keyboard parts. No need to worry, the keyboards are only latently present. Unlike some other cases, this is an album where the keyboards are not endangering/sodomizing the atmosphere. And as said, what we're dealing with here is a peculiar darkening atmosphere. One that is not far away from choking you like only a serpent could; elegantly but conclusively.

Although not entirely flawless and perfect, this serpent's chokehold is still one hell of a cohesive album. And the balance between upbeat melodic sections and the melancholic mood seeping in from all angles is just luminous. The splendor of Insomnium's creation or not, "Across The Dark" is certainly among the better catches of the present year. Winter cannot come fast enough.