
Penumbra is the title of the first discographic proof of the Finnish Atlases. For once, from the lands of the far north, we are offered neither a glacial black metal (which as we have seen, however, is not developed in the land of a thousand lakes as in neighboring countries) nor dark or desperate forms of funeral death doom: here in fact we find a beautiful interpretation of a post metal that, only at times, shows a certain roughness to leave place more frequently to airy and dreamy melodies. The band from Pori, after all, is composed of experienced musicians and quality above suspicion: Penumbra from here part to wind along these 26 minutes of excellent post metal, melodic and cloaked in that melancholy that perhaps only Finns have so spontaneously in the ropes. The five tracks are all equally worthy of attention, with the opener An Era We’ll Bury and Shards Of Broken Light alternating rarefied moments and more open moments, but always at a reasoned speed, with A Passage Through Nebula that exhibits a chorus of rare beauty and the instrumental Hamartia that spreads clear notes, to end with the Medusa‘s incedere that would appear surprisingly dark if we didn’t know that Jamppa Lamminpää has been the singer of Depressed Mode, second tier exponents of that melodic death doom that in Finnish land finds deep roots. It must be said, to tell the truth, that the compositional effort falls on the shoulders of Ville-Veikko Laaksonen, former Oceanwake, and therefore with greater post metal propensities that here are brought to levels frankly unassailable for execution but especially for depth. Keeping in mind that Penumbra is only a debut ep, for Atlases we can only imagine a successful path, if not from the commercial point of view (difficult for the genre even from the receptive parts of Helsinki) certainly the purely qualitative one.
2017 – Pest Records
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