At the end of August, Insomnium released the first song from their next album, One For Sorrow, which is scheduled to hit the streets on October 12 in Finland, October 17 in the rest of Europe, and October 18 in the U.S. The song was “Unsung”, and of course we had to put it up on NCS pronto (here). If you haven’t heard it yet, it’s a great song.
Earlier this week, the band and Century Media released the first official video from the album for another song, “Through the Shadows”. That video is now on YouTube and can be embedded, so that’s what we’re doing after the jump.
This is not the Insomnium I know and love. Where “Unsung” included clean vocals, they were brief and I thought they worked well in the song. This new one is at least half clean vocals. Is Insomnium drifting toward the Amorphis end of the Finnish melodeath spectrum?
Yes, you can call me a narrow-minded bigot about clean singing in extreme metal. I plead guilty. I don’t hate this song, but it’s not doing much for me either. I’ll just leave it at that and play the video after the jump, because after all, it’s still Insomnium.
7 Responses to “INSOMNIUM: “THROUGH THE SHADOWS””
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Personally, I love this song, but I agree that Insomnium are better off as an all-growling band (although I do enjoy the short bursts of clean singing they sometimes include, such as in “Unsung”). I wouldn’t worry about the rest of the album being like this, though, because the reviews I’ve read of “One For Sorrow” have been overflowing with praise, saying that it contains some of their heaviest material to date.
That’s good to hear. I was starting to get worried when I saw a press release saying the album would be a wide mix, with some of it sounding like Cult of Luna, and then hearing this song.
Yeah, I read that, too, but if I’m not mistaken, that release also compared the sound to Amon Amarth in the very same sentence. That in addition to the reviews I mentioned (one of which even claimed that there are blast beats in one of the songs) is enough to ease my mind in regards to this album.
True — the Amon Amarth reference was a marker for the other end of the spectrum on the album.
Clean vocals in extreme metal are ok with me, as long as they’re done with good taste and used within reasonable limits e.g Heaven Shall Burns ‘Given in Death’ is superb and has been one of my fav songs for the past months. However, in this song they do seem to almost ruin it for me, even when the clean parts are rather limited. Still, I wouldn’t get worried about this being their new direction in music and the more traditional Insomnium parts are still sweet as hell!
I don’t know if it’s just because of the melody being so fucking addictive, but I love this song.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever even heard Insomnium before (sorry, I’m a shitty metalhead), but this song is pretty awesome. The clean vocals are done damn near perfectly and kind of sit far back enough in the mix to complement the guitars instead of ruining them. I think. What the fuck do I know, right?
Still. Nice song. I’ll have to look more into this album…
New to Insomnium? Dude, you have got some sweet music ahead of you. Try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K003TNG40P8