NATURE'S DESPAIR

On first couple of listens an interesting album! Lush, layered guitar sounds permeate this collection with wonderful melodic passages and the recording standard is high and uplifting. The opening track lulls you gently before you encounter Salvation! an incredible track with an epic and powerful guitar sound and the best on the album. More variable work on The Dust and Where Do Whales Breed? with nice changes of pace to keep you interested. I think this band would be great to see live but not sure I will make it to Finland. The more I listen the more I like it. Will listen a few more times and update again!

SISARE is a new band from Turku, Finland. The songwriter and vocalist Severi Peura is one of the two playing guitar, and keyboards are totally absent. This debut album with great drawn cover contains eight songs between three and 8+ minutes in length, all sung in English.

'The Brew' features the only guest performance, Heidi Lahtinen on violin - which is actually the first thing to be heard. It brings a folk flavour into the melancholic and classic rock spirited song. 'Salvation?' comes occasionally closer to Metal, especially on drums and guitars, but Peura's vocals luckily don't get aggressive. His clean rock baritone is loaded with slightly depressed emotion and is technically very capable; the very long notes on 'Isolation' are sung without any uncertainty. The prog aspect is not very central, meaning that a rock listener can enjoy SISARE's music simply as powerful and melancholic rock without a necessary prog orientation. The compositions don't have notable shifts into completely different sections, nor do they have significant instrumental parts.

Perhaps the best comparisons (Post Metal is not a familiar subgenre to me) come from the more intelligent area of Heavy / Metal music, bands such as ANATHEMA, OPETH and STEVEN WILSON's several involvements. Nevertheless the songs are mostly relatively atmospheric, and the guitars have a good balance between heaviness and delicacy. it's hard to spot faults in this well-done album, which is also produced and mixed by Severi Peura himself, but it's also difficult to pick favourite songs (with the exception of the opener featuring the violin) as the entire album is more or less soaked in the same dark melancholia. Maybe because of that feeling I give "only" three stars in this prog environment.