SilentiumMotiva

Darkness and melancholy have always been at the heart of the best Finnish metal, and on their first album in twelve years, Silentium highlight all of that grand despondency.

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Steeped in that northern latitudes tradition of brooding atmosphere, Motiva is an elegantly paced album that grows in darkness, intensity and beauty as it progresses.

Sadly sawing cellos and haunting keyboard melodies clash darkly against crashing guitars as songs expand from quiet, bleak ambience to swirling storms of pensive sorrow. Vow and Safer-Easier inject some classic doom into Silentium’s sturdy and resonant Gothic aesthetic. Then Vortex unfolds with sweeping string arrangements and faster sections from heavy guitars; the male vocals are jarring and dissonant against Riina Rinkinen’s soaring, piercing notes.

With a doleful eye toward the light, Silentium’s Motiva is the essence of Finnish melancholic metal, a dark and majestic triumph.

With Motiva a metaphor for her own journey through depression, Rinkinen’s performance is little short of outstanding throughout, the bittersweet beauty of her delivery on every track carrying the weight of a struggle for hope against wretchedness. Circle whispers echoes of Anette Olzon-era Nightwish ahead of the album’s major suite, the orchestrated and suitably-titled Tide that ebbs and flows as it builds from Rinkinen alone to a dramatic, lugubrious Gothic doom epic. With a doleful eye toward the light, Silentium’s Motiva is the essence of Finnish melancholic metal, a dark and majestic triumph.

STANDOUT TRACKS: Vow, Vortex, Tide
STICK THIS NEXT TO: Theatre of Tragedy, Nightwish, Virgin Black