Tukkanuotta / Goresoerd

There's been surprisingly little co-operation between Finland and Estonia on the metal frontier. Metsatöll and Must Missa do play frequent gigs in Helsinki, and some local bands spend the mandatory 4 hours on cheap ferries crossing the Gulf of Finland the other way to play gigs in Tallinn's clubs, but otherwise the two countries, located a longish commuting distance apart, don't seem to find much synergy in their scenes.

With such a fertile opportunity available for the takers, some joint ventures are bound to surface, however, and one recent project is the new Tukkanuotta/Goresoerd split and the attached tour of both countries by the two bands. As a beginning of potential long term co-operation between the two labels, the split seems like a nice start: the four songs and ten minutes on the split are very enjoyable death metal, and the sides of the split are in rather nice balance.

Tukkanuotta has been a local Helsinki area favourite for a few years, and among others, they have played on the Tuska Open Air Metal Festival. Their brand of death metal is quite old-schoolish, but with a modern production, occasional melodies, and lyrics mostly about disasterous boozing nights ending in alcohol poisoning, getting the shit kicked out of someone, or drug usage and the attached worldview. Their lyrics are next to impossible to translate, as they are mostly based on bad wordplays, double meanings and local figures of speech, twisted beyond recognition. Delivered in a genuinely scary "crazy dude" grunt, they are quite effective, and hint deeper meanings.

On this split, their first track, the self-titled "Tukkanuotta" is probably a band anthem, an alcohol-soaked and hangover-drenched experience, a death metal party theme song if there ever was one, with a trashy sing-along chorus. The second one, surprisingly, holds a longish melodic section, perhaps the longest on the band's career so far. It's not any pussied-up woman-wooing part, however, but a full-blooded death metal middle part. The track title, "Kivimetsän Broidi", is of course a play on the quite goofy local folk metal band Kivimetsän Druidi, but the song certainly has nothing to do with the folksters... actually, telling what the hell is going on in the lyrics calls for a shrink, but someone with a face of stone and a stench of death emerges from the woods and drinks someone's solvents, tearing the depths of the soul apart...

In any case, Tukkanuotta basically continues the themes and guaranteed quality of work they have shown themselves capable of before. The tracks are exclusive to this release, so run, Forrest, run! into the record stores selling it, before the copies sell out.

The Estonian contribution by Goresoerd is of a slightly different brand of death metal. Their two songs have the same old-school vibe to them, but their approach includes a whiff of grindcore and some punkish attitude overall. At the same time, the production on their 4½ minutes of death metal is a few steps closer to old-fashioned DM of yesteryear, and they have a late-90s spirit in full swing. The biggest stylistic difference to Tukkanuotta, in addition to higher tempo, is in the vocals, Goresoerd's old-fashioned scream-yell is from a completely different school of death metal.

The two two-minutes songs are a quick and ruthless affair, and to a Finn, not understanding the lyrics that sound like something one should understand is almost frustrating. In any case, the music is very good, and seeing the band live would no doubt be a welcome experience. One of the tracks, "Surm Ka Ei Tea", is off the band's full-length Tüdruk Ja Surm, but the other is likely an exclusive track. More worth for those who own the split, in other words.

This split is a very nice and very quick affair. It packs four pretty good tracks from two strictly local bands into ten minutes, and perhaps heralds the beginning of a fruitful co-operation between the two record companies, Nailboard and Stay Heavy, and in the bigger picture, between the Finnish and Estonian scenes.

Worth getting, and definitely worth supporting.