The Unseen Passage / Hidden Stream

I stumbled across this band by doing a search for “nature” in lyrical themes, for my geography class, and decided to check it out. Well, this really should not belong on this site, since it is far beyond metal, except maybe some of the lyrics. That does not really matter for the review though, as it is still quite beautiful music.

All this music, according to their site, is influenced by the beauty and solitude of nature, and that is definitely seen in the delicate structure of the songs and the organic rhythms used throughout. Now most people would start screaming WORLD MUSIC here, and write it off as garbage, and I have to say to that that it is definitely teetering on the knife edge between World Music and art (world music is wankery).

Now for the music. It is mostly folk-inspired music, with the Kantele as the lead instru-ment, helped by keyboards, bass, and occasional drums. Vocals are whispered over the music, like wind blowing through a forest. They add to the atmosphere of solitude and beauty portrayed by this music. Minimal orchestral drums create a sense of movement, but generally do not take over the music. What can definitely be considered metal are the distorted guitar blasts in the third song, Harbinger of a Greater Winter. This seems to me to represent a sort of disruption of the equilibrium of nature represented. Most of the mu-sic is very lush instrumental music with barely noticeable vocals, that work great as more relaxing, but brooding music. There is always a hint of sadness in the songs though, which make the whole EP quite melancholy. This EP is not as refreshing as Woodsmoke, their full-length album, but it does the job.