Finland is great for funeral doom like stabat mater and skepticisim amongst others.

Black/Thrash is good like Neutron Hammer, Evil Angel and Urn.

If you like those genres then Finland is a gold mine.

Not even close.

When it comes to Finnish metal I am a huge fan of early Finnish death metal. There are some gems from the early 90's era that are surely worth my time.

I am compelled to mention early Wyrd. Heathen is a great, Burzum-influenced record.

I can see why people hate Finland's popular metal bands, and although I don't feel the same conviction, there's a lot of great bands in Finland. Reverend Bizarre, Demilich, Demigod, etc.

I would suggest 2 bands to recompose your opinion on Finnish metal: Early Amorphis (specially the Privillege of Evil and The Karelian Isthmus) and early Sentenced (Shadows from the Past, North from Here and Amok)

For the Black Metal thing, I second Horna

Well, OK, Horna might have a tiny little problem for foreigners, their lyrics are good ones, but largely in Finnish. Especially the Viha ja viikate EP has exceptionally good, ambiguous and poetic black lyrics, and they are even pretty easy to hear, giving extra depth to the music.

Don't forget about the pre-Amorphis band, Abhorrence, and their demo and the EP. Magnificent stuff. I don't recall seeing Funebre mentioned yet either...

The OP seems to have a grudge against melody so obviously he's going to prefer other scenes.

I had a similar prejudice against french bands for similar reasons. Couldn't stand how "norse" sounding the scene was and it all seemed the same to me and came off as really cheesy. I absolutely refused to listen to anything french (especially black metal) that came out after 1994. I actually just listened to Mutiilation for the first time the other day (was ok...)

I'm 100% Behind the previous mentions of Beherit, Archgoat, Imp. Nazarene etc. If you thought of DDTM as a let down maybe give it another try sometime, I preferred TOOBB to it for a long time but then after hearing DDTM again at a friends house constantly I grew to prefer it actually.

Let me be the first to mention some old greats such as Xysma, Oz, Satanic Evil.

Those are no small exceptions. Especially Darkthrone.

I don't think most French black metal bands sound Nordic at all. It would have been better if they actually did...

The ones from Brittany or Normandy kind of do since that region has strong Norse cultural pride from when the Vikings settled in there.

Nespithe is available for free on their homepage

And that is the only album, unless you were thinking about getting the demos.

Well like every country there's going to be shit bands and great bands. There is no way you can dismiss the Finnish scene when it produces bands the caliber of Impaled Nazarene, Amorphis and Ensiferum though. Also I recently bought an Ancestors Blood cd as a random buy and was thoroughly impressed with it. Somewhat Buzum influenced but that's never a bad thing.

The word 'free' is one of the sweetest in the vocabulary so regardless I have no excuse to not check it out. But why would they give it away for free?

Explains alot.

French maybe the language of love,German the language of fiery hate, Norwegian the best for heathenry...and Finnish? Drunken renaissance festivities? I don't know.

There's also Barathrum and Horna and Clandestine Blaze, oh my!

I can't believe the lack of Archgoat mention... only 2 people? they lay waste to the majority of black metal.. period. Bands like Black Death Ritual, IC Rex, Belial, Unholy, Disgrace and many of the ones previously mentioned makes this country anything but second class when it comes to producing top level metal. What about Thy Serpent, Goatmoon, Pest, Ikuinen Kaamos, Diaboli, Deep Red, Shape of Despair? man the list could go on and on but I figured I'd just mention bands who weren't mentioned already.

Depravity was another good Finnish DM band. Silence of the Centuries is reminiscent of Demigod. Speaking of which, Adramelech is good too.

I thought Archgoat broke up. Does anyone own their sole full-length?

The above posts say enough. Bands like 'Impaled Nazarene', 'Behexen', 'Clandestine Blaze' and 'Horna' are on top of the game IMO.
Add bands like 'Ikuinen Kaamos', 'Shape Of Despair', 'Korpiklaani', old 'Ajattara', 'Barathrum' etc and you have a great scene.
I can see how the current Power Metal scene is failing to spawn new interesting bands, but that's pretty much a global problem IMO.

btw, besides Russian, Finnish is the coolest language to sing metal in.

Count me in among those who think Finnish
metal is great. Satanic Warmaster, Horna,
and Behexen are favorites of mine.

Finnish doesn't have hard and forceful sounds like German has to offer for sung metal.

Really? Listen to some old 'Ajattara' or the latest live 'Impaled Nazarene' album. It sounds a lot more "hard" and aggressive than German IMO.

Finland basically pioneered Funeral Doom metal with Skepticism and Thergothon. On top of that they have Shape Of Despair and Stabat Mater too. Finland's doom scene overall is amazing, with the likes of Reverend Bizarre and Spiritus Mortis.

The black metal scene is also in no way as bad as people make it out to be. The list of finnish black metal bands of high to very high quality goes on for a long time. Azaghal, Archgoat, Behexen, Beherit, Horna, Sargeist, Satanic Warmaster, Clandestine Blaze and Impaled Nazarene are all examples of bands that stand out.

And on top of that, they have some really good grindcore too.

There is no way to dismiss a scene when it produces so many diverse things of so high qualyty, even when it produces the likes of Children of Bodom and Stratovarius.

Oh and how could I forget to have mentioned Sonata Arctica? Another band which I loathe that so happens to come from Finland. Although I don't care for power metal to begin with.

One thing that strikes me about your original post, is that it seems like you don't have a handle on the timeline when everything occurred. I feel like you think Norway came first, then Sweden, and everyone else followed, but that couldn't be further from the truth (unless you view Lords of Chaos as a history book).

Most of the second wave of Black Metal was an international scene inspired by older bands like Venom, Possessed, Hellhammer, Sarcofago, etc. who wanted to bring back the more hardcore Satanic imagery that the Thrash scene had pretty much forgotten. There were bands all over the world who were all working on the same wavelength, with one or two leading bands in each scene (Mayhem in Norway, Beherit in Finland, Blasphemy in Canada, etc, etc). The Norwegian scene just became the most famous one because of the true crime aspect and the music was so good that it sustained interest after the initial hype. I think maybe your perception is biased with the false idea that the bands from Finland were "ripping off" the "more established" scenes like Norway and Sweden, when that is really not accurate. Perhaps if Holocausto had killed someone or burned some shit down, people would think that everyone else were ripping off the Finnish bands?

I do agree that there are tons of shitty, cheesy bands from Finland (Lordi is a great example) but I am biased towards underground Finnish Black metal. I think it was because when the scene first started, the Finns had much more variation to their sound, whereas a lot of the Norwegian and Swedish bands sounded very similar to each other to me. Beherit and Unholy especially took the music to a different place than anyone else did.

Maybe your problem with Finnish bands is not that they sound like rip-offs from other countries as you stated, but that they don't sound enough like bands from other countries. You saying you liked Oath of Black Blood and not Drawing Down The Moon gives me that impression. When I heard Drawing Down The Moon for the first time, I was blown away by how different it was from anything else, and in my opinion no one has ever captured that same essence or mood again. I can see that if you were wanting super fast METAL, like Marduk or Dark Funeral, that DDTM would not be what you were looking for, but when approached with an open mind, I can't see how people would not think it was pure genius.

There have been a lot of great Finnish Black Metal bands to follow, they've all been named here so I wont list them all again, but I think the problem is not the music, but your approach to it. Try to think of them as unique and not as rip-offs of Norway or Sweden and you may see the light (or "the dark" in this case).

I also will echo other peoples opinions about the doom bands - Thergothon, Skepticism, etc. Finland is the birthplace for Funeral Doom.

Oddly, I never really like Finnish Death Metal. I really wanted to like it because I adored the Black Metal so much, but Demigod and Demilich never struck a chord with me. Maybe I'll download Nespithe from their webpage and give it another try.

There is a uniqueness to the Finnish bands that no one else can capture. Sometimes that uniqueness is not a good thing (Lordi again), but I really think you need to try again with fresh ears and give them another try.

Give also Disgrace's "Grey Misery", Funebre's "Children of the Scorn", Xysma's "Yeah" and the Abhorrence EP a try if you haven't already. Also the pre-album stuff of Disgrace, Funebre and Xysma is absolutely worth looking into.

That Finnish music which doesn't ape Sweden or America has an exotic, almost 'alien' quality, at least to my crude American ears. Actually listening to the Viikate 'christmas album' at the moment.

Definitely give Sargeist a try if you are into the minimalist, raw shit.

That's kind of silly. DO you turn your nose up at American metal because metalcore is extremely popular there right now? If so, you're missing out on a lot of great bands in all sorts of genres .. and I'd say the same goes for the Finish music. I don't know a lot of these modern Finnish bm bands but the classics sure are great, and there are still some damn fine black metal bands coming from Finland .. Hail being one notable example. Finland also had some good doom bands (Reverend Bizarre). However, the death metal that comes from Finland is by far the most notable to me .. especially Adramelech and Demilich.

Add Hateform to that list and you've really got some awesome deathrash bands, better than any other country has to offer. Some of the more "newer" finnish bands that seem to be gaining attention that I would recommend trying out would be Sotajumala (death metal with finnish lyrics) and Amoral (technical death metal).

Yes that was very insubordinate of them. They should have been court-marshalled for it and kicked out of the Black Metal Warhorde. There is NO tolerance for faggy 'independent thought' in the unholy army against the pests of light!!!

And if you want some sheer epic dark pagan musicality, one need look no further than the amazing Moonsorrow.

I believe Nuclear Holocausto said something along the lines of:

"They started it!"

I guess Finland is so known because they had some trendsetting bands like Children Of Bodom, Stratovarius or Nightwish that had tons of followers.
The same goes for the underground BM scene, as they were one of the first who started releasing radically limited releases that caught attention because of the high Ebay prices. Suddenly everybody got interested in the Finnish scene and so they got copied by a lot of bands. I am thinking of bands as Clandestine Blaze, Satanic Warmaster, Warloghe, Bloodhammer,...

I personally like only a few newer bands like Armour or the great Incriminated. I definitely prefer the old scene with bands such as Tarot, Abhorrence, Amorphis, Sarcofagus. etc.