Insomnium
Shadows Of The Dying Sun

There's been plenty of bands that has made my stomach hurt during the years I've reviewed music and usually I feel sick due to the complete shittiness of a band. But there is one band, and only one band, that has managed to make my stomach ache because the music is so freakin' great! And that's Insomnium.

I can't say I've considered Insomnium as my favorite band in the world, but they are a great band with a steady repertoire that's never made me disappointed. However, as with other matters to the heart it's not that easy that love always finds the prettiest and sexiest girl - you can't help who you fall in love with and to me Insomnium has always been that sexy, gorgeous girl that I'd love to bang so hard it hurts my stomach but hasn't really fallen in love with.

This band seems to be able to stop the time every time they play their melodic death metal. It's like all the clocks just stops. Even the earth stops spinning around the sun and instead it starts spinning around the CD that is like frozen still in the stereo while the entire universe spins around it. The music just feels so otherworthly, like it's created before everything else and it's just our instinct to react to it. While the other gods in the genre (In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, Children Of Bodom and so on) makes basically the same kind of music, Insomnium has managed to do something the others never succeeded with - just making me stop everything, drop everything and just listen. And enjoy. And how couldn't I enjoy when the music flows this nicely? It's as seamless like a stone statue carved from one single block - it's just there like if it was created that way naturally and it's so smooth and perfect like if it would have been made out of vax.

It's pretty strange when you think of it, because the music is not what you call lullabies - it's hard and aggressive like a block of flint, yet the music is so soft and wonderful to hear. I feel like I'm under a spell every time I hear it. I'm almost afraid I'll pick this album before my girlfriend when I'm about to have sex, which might sound a bit stupid and of course is stupid. But there is something about Insomnium that makes me stupid, it's almost as if I was… yes, I believe I'm in love!

Insomnium is one of the bands with the highest review average on their albums and that would make it pretty unnecessary for me to go on about who they are but should you be someone that has missed this wonder from Finland then I can tell you they've always been up there around the top scores. Eights and nines when we had a scale to ten and sixes since we switched. They play a guitar driven melodic death metal that doesn't hide their music in a messy production. Instead they make sure every musician is heard on an individual level equally much. The dark and more or less grunting vocals are often changed to clean and clear vocals in the choruses and more important parts of the songs and when they do this it's quite common that the others join in on the vocals. To me it's a lethal weapon for the band to mix the drums as high up in the production hierarchy because I think one reason to why Insomnium have such a great flow in their music is because they let the rhythm be present and push the music forward all the time and not hide it behind everything else like most of their friends in the genre do. The strings sounds great too and here is the only change the band has done since 'One For Sorrow' as they've got a new guitarist but if anything I think this has made this guitar oriented band even stronger.

Honestly, though, it difficult to pick something that is better than the rest on this album because it all sounds fantastic! It looks great with a nice, simple cover in the same vein as their previous album but somehow even more ingenious. As with the music - it's the same kind of music Insomnium always play but somehow even more ingenious. Which is strange because there wasn't much space open for improvement but they've managed that anyway. I guess that makes this album more or less perfect? Well… it kind of feels that way.

In my world only an idiot wouldn't buy 'Shadows of The Dying Sun'. Why? Because this is amazing!

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