Talking about death doom from Finland runs the risk of no longer attracting the reader’s attention or, even worse, of being repetitive, but on the other hand, that scene possesses such depth that it appears almost inexhaustible. Also contributing to avert all the possible side effects mentioned above is the fact that, often, the musicians who devote themselves to it for the first time have decades of experience behind them, albeit gained in other sub-genres. This is the case of Jussi Hänninen, one of the founders of interesting Fall of the Leaf, a gothic band that moved for a decade between the century, and currently working with the talented atmospheric blacksters Autumnfall, from which also hails Tero Ruohonen, his companion on vocals in these The Bleak Picture. Songs of Longing, the duo’s debut work, is an EP that is about twenty-five minutes long, with four tracks that are not predictable and, all in all, not too much in line with the dictates of Finnish melodic death doom, thanks also to interesting solutions in the use of both the keyboard and the clean vocals, with which a certain gothic heritage is manifested, although not in an overly marked manner. It is precisely this nuance that makes the proposal more personal, especially in songs such as The Dead Beginning and Tragedy’s Own, while more canonical mournful and melancholic cues emerge strongly in the splendid Broken Statue, a worthy closing of a work that already represents something more than just a first taste of the talents of The Bleak Picture. 

2022 – Alone Records