(The Japanese melodic death metal band Galundo Tenvulance released a new album on the Spiritual Beast label in September of this year. What you’ll find below is our DGR’s enthusiastic review.)
The universe has its constants – such as the existence of a universal constant concept; in the grand cosmic chaos that many a metal band have drawn from for inspiration, there have been a few things we’ve been able to use as sign posts along the way. Whether it be the classic ‘death and taxes’ or the equally reliable refrain that ‘things can always get worse’, the reliability of them is undeniable.
We would actually propose another, which we’ve covered before here, and that is the idea that you just never, ever, ever forget a band name like Galundo Tenvulance after it goes sailing across your desk even one time.
By way of us covering them here, the idea is spread even further in a sort of memetic propotion, such that even if you’ve never listened to a moment of the group’s music you’d be able to pick the name out of a pile of shredded books. It follows you everywhere, assembling out of the aether like a horror movie. You could spend years wondering just what in the unholy hell inspired the name or, more likely, what cultural reference these youngsters from Japan are making.
The name alone is enough of a head-turner that you can’t help but be curious, and the group’s very European-inspired take on keyboard-heavy melodeath has been appealing enough that now the name is enough of a ‘known factor’ around here, such that it barely elicits a second bewildered glance. We just know that we’re in for some high-tempo, guitar and keyboard heavy shred-fests with a vocalist likely sailing over the top of it with such verve that you walk away jealous.
Insomnis Somnia is Galundo Tenvulance’s second full-length, coming to us a hair over two years after the group’s first full length, Lunar Eclipture. Prior to that, the group had been existing through a series of singles and EP collections, and all the while they hammered away at both sound and eventually – hopefully – crystalized their lineup into the form that we see now. Although – as is tradition this year – we find ourselves late to the bus with the release of Insomnis Somnia, with its arrival date being September 17th, 2025.
Yours truly cannot possibly think of anything whatsoever that would’ve been happening at this site around that time that might’ve caused someone to miss such an album release – even if we may have posted about or mentioned it four times. But alas, we refuse to let things go around here and relevant timescale coverage be damned. Since Insomnis Somnia saw release we’ve taken the opportunity to explore and romp around within its forty-one and a half minute bounds to see just what this group and their newly minted vocalist Sao have on offer this time around, and just how much they manage to weaponize their symphonic element on a wider scale in conjunction with the relentless assault on the guitar front.
Insomnis Somnia runs in near parallel to Galundo Tenvulance’s previous album, Lunar Eclipture. These are songs of lush composition wherein the band are stacking layers on top of each other like pylons to eventually be used for a skyscraper. Many of the songs on Insomnis Somnia are colored by just how ‘present’ every bit of instrumentation is, and there’s nary a moment of silence where someone isn’t doing something. As the band have matured they’ve grown tighter on their instruments as well, which when we consider that they were already well-concentrated and well-formed starting out only now means that Galundo Tenvulance are operating on an extremely precise level.
Were it not for the part that there is music involved, you could point to Insomnis Somnia as a demo-reel for the crew’s ability to mathematically on-point at every single moment. If something needs to be there, it is there. There’s zero looseness or slop here and no happy mistakes, things found through stumbling into them. Music will work here because Galundo Tenvulance are precise enough to make it work.
Like it’s older sibling Insomnia Somnia is also about forty-one minutes in length, though the number of songs present differs by a needlepoint. Insomnis Somnia appears larger from the start but the album is bookended by two short instrumentals, so the fourteen-song structure lays closer to twelve, so the two albums are basically one song apart. The difference is that with the similar run times, Insomnis Somnia is a bit quicker moving than its predecessor was, so there has been a little bit of song-trimming happening in the Galundo Tenvulance camp. It’s a discussion of the stretching of seconds and this time around the ship’s crewmates have kept things hovering in the three-to-four minute camp with little room for negotiation. Things have an aura of being snappier as a result since Galundo Tenvulance are quickly moving from song-to-song in that regard.
In all seriousness, the band rarely stop for a breath as they pile through the first four songs on Insomnis Somnia. Intro “Sleepless Dreams” piles its way right into “Abuse Of Hatred” and “The Skylight Above Us”, with “The Soul To Be Punished Dwells Within Me” adding itself to the early rear-end pileup as if it had a train it was going to miss right at the end. You’d never guess these were some of the longer songs on this release going by that first assault. It is breathless and fun as hell as the band intwerweave their songs together into compact and intricate pieces while the vocals are snarled above them.
“One Step Closer” at the mid-point of the album is, surprisingly enough, not a cover song. It is instead another immensely intricate and high-speed song with a guitar riff of immense deftness. At this point in Insomnis Somnia it is more than clear that this is Galundo Tenvulance’s chosen blueprint; they clearly love those high-tempo shredding guitar fests of old and make it a point to have much of the melodic work brought to the forefront. While they’ve definitely let the drums cut through far more than before, this is not a band wherein the rhythm section is the focal point. They’re the backbone, and their existence is to make sure the machine is standing up straight so that the guitarists and keyboards can spotlight-hog. There is merit to be had in being the solid core that everything falls back to time and time again, and the rhythm section of Galundo Tenvulance wears the badge once again.
Insomnis Somnia is an impressive work. Galundo Tenvulance have had a fast-moving career thus far, and that they’ve been able to keep the pace without giving in to a calmer sort of songwriting is commendable. The adoration for keyboard and guitar pyrotechnics is shown in multiple forms across Insomnis Somnia, such that the forty-one minutes of the album do tend to blur together. The dynamics of this album – save for its few moments of instrumental levity – are often ratched up way past redlining and are in full acceleration. You’re getting just as many European stock and staple melodeath riffs as you are showier ’80s arena rock and metal parts being fed into symphonic backings at high speed. That there is any guitar work left for anyone else to use within the radius of Japan will be all the more impressive at a certain point.
Insomnis Somnia is twelve songs of relentless melodeath in that way, perfect for the crowd that adored the keyboard-loving and guitar-destroying shenanigans of bands like Children Of Bodom and Mors Principium Est. Everything is built around the lead here. The vocals, the guitars, the keyboards – all of them lead the hard charge on Insomnis Somnia with the rhythm section serving as the propelling force behind it. If you wish to add to your collection of intricate and majestic melodeath acts, then Insomnis Somnia is an album that will have you covered.
And you certainly won’t forget their name. It will follow you forever.
https://spiritualbeast.bandcamp.com/album/insomnis-somnia
https://www.facebook.com/galundotenv/