Musta Kappeli "Saatanassa Ulvoneet" CD

New mini album with 23 minutes of new material. Really dark mid tempo black metal with synths and extremely satanic Finnish written lyrics. 8 pages booklet including lyrics.

Raw, clumsy and unexciting – that’s how this one can be summed up. Pretty surprising, since I expected much more from this band. Musically this is mostly mid-paced black metal with the guitar being the loudest instrument in the mix. The sound is pretty messy, which adds a sludgy character to the music but I cannot say that this factor works in favour of “Saatanassa Ulvoneet”. Instead it’s a pain to listen to, everything sounds unclear and when also the execution is pretty lacking overall (i.e. rather sloppy) I can’t find much good to say about this.
Already the first track “Jään Kutsu” doesn’t bode well. It’s a keyboard track and the keyboard sound isn’t cold or atmospheric at all, it sounds cheap instead. At times keyboards appear in the metal tracks too but since they sound cheap and “uncold” they’re unable to create any chilling atmospheres. Hell, e.g. old Graveland (say, “In the Glare of Burning Churches”) was raw and clumsy too but it still managed to evoke a very evil and cold atmosphere, not to mention sound totally dedicated. “Saatanassa Ulvoneet” sounds more like someone messing around with black metal and not digging deep enough. The right atmosphere and feeling is just totally lacking on this release, it sounds like the band are fumbling around in the dark instead of feeding off it. Or perhaps me and Musta Kappeli just have totally different ideas about what black metal should sound like and what kind of an atmosphere it should create? All I know is that this recording doesn’t give me what I’m looking for at all. Another thing I must mention about the keyboards is that they sound out of tune with the guitar on “Ihmisyyden Hämärässä”, with annoys me a lot.
Conceptually “Saatanassa Ulvoneet” seems to deal with lycanthropy, something the intro of “Belialin Mustat Sudet” clearly shows. Actually, I don’t know if the whole release is based on this concept or just the title and the last two tracks but this, the concept, is about the only really interesting thing I can find here.
The biggest gripe I have about the production is that the drums are often way too low in the mix plus the drum sound isn’t powerful at all. Better audible drums wouldn’t have made the music any better but at least there would’ve been one thing less to be pissed off at when listening to this. There are some clean vocals on “Kaarnaisen Vihan Arvet” and “Spiritus Lupus” but they sound just awful, so including them was a mistake. Sad to say, but this release is pretty much a total failure. I’ve also seen Musta Kappeli being compared to old Gehenna but “Saatanassa Ulvoneet” doesn’t come even close.

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