Marianas Rest are back to bring us its melancholy.
After two very good releases, the finnish band created in 2013 signs with Napalm Records for Fata Morgana, its third album. Jaakko Mäntymaa (vocals), Aapo Koivisto (keyboard, Omnium Gatherum), Harri Sunila (guitar), Nico Heininen (drums), Nico Mänttäri (guitar) and Niko Lindman (bass, Omnivortex) are ready.
The album begins with Sacrificial, a song that will set the general pace. Between weighing sonorities, melodic riffs and dark rhythmic, the vocalist offers tearing howlings, magnificent clean vocals and an impressive presence, while letting instruments ensure a heady melancholic basis. The band’s coldness is expressed by softer parts, like on Glow From The Edge and its wonderful introduction, joined by whispers. Visceral vocals come to create fascination and dread, while the instrumental part mesmerizes us. Screams of pain are completed by Timo Virkkala’s violin and Lindsay Schoolcraft’s voice (Antiqva, ex-Cradle of Filth), that wonderfully accompany this lament, that turns into some words, increasing intensity before exploding again. Pointless Tale is next with a more energetic rhythmic, but sorrow and blackness are still part of those mesmerizing sonorities, creating a foggy veil that alternates between a cold beauty and an obscure strength. The track sometimes wears some kind of languor, offering a clean sound in which we can still feel the band’s influences, then The Weight comes with a heavy sound. Riffs are slower, thicker and above all they’re strengthened by an oppressive ambience, offering the song a crushing atmosphere.
The band unveils us a transcending introduction for the short Horrorskeen, a song on which we find this violin and those frightening words that come out of the dark before the rhythmic calms us down again. Fata Morgana is next, and that’s a terrifying howling that welcomes us on a quite sweet but still full of deep feelings and chained rage rhythm part. Howlings will finally free the furor, slowly igniting the rhythmic, joined by majestic orchestrations that increase this feeling of grandeur. We feel into the singer’s voice that those simple words are painful, like an illusion that disappears, then Advent Of Nihilism makes us sink again in a sea of blackness. However, riffs are quite mild, and the contrast with saturated vocals offers a fascinating opening between those two opposed but still so complementary worlds. The album ends with South Of Vostok, a composition that picks some sonorities into finnish coldness, but also into a slowness and a mesmerizing heaviness, dubbed by airy leads.
Marianas Rest already had an excellent discography, but Fata Morgana adds a masterpiece. This album’s intensity never ceases to increase, offering the world eight blazing compositions made of melancholy and languor.
95/100